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This week on the pod we're diving into the upcoming Nardcore for Life compilation that will be released on Indecision Records on September 4th, 2020. Pre-orders are up today so please go to http://indecisionrecords.com to order it (and pick up a sweet tank top). I'm joined by Joe Rivas, Stu Wilson, and Andrew Hester and we dig into the track listing of the vinyl portion of this comp. From Ill Repute to Dead Heat to Downpresser to In Control to Stalag 13, and on and on. Then I'm joined by Tony Cortez of Ill Repute. We talk the original Nardcore comp: how it came to be. There's also another storytime with Forest in here, so buckle up champ! Please subscribe, like, rate, and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Please consider supporting the show: patreon.com/185milessouth paypal.me/185milessouth Check us out on social media: instagram.com/185milessouth facebook.com/185milessouth twitter.com/185milessouth All Episodes are available at: 185milessouth.comSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/185milessouth)

Michelle Oates: A promise tomorrow is worth a lot less than trying today. I am Michelle Oates and I'm a Tri-Cities influencer. Paul Casey: But really this is the core philosophy of what I teach in time management, and that is manage your time around your values and vision. This is your foundation for everything else in time management. Speaker 3: Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington in Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to the TCI podcast where local leadership and self-leadership expert, Paul Casey interviews local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams, so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Cari McGee. Cari is a realtor with Keller Williams and I asked for a fun fact about her. She has very vivid dreams that she still remembers, but Cari, you're going to have to tell the story. Cari McGee: Okay. Well, a lot of grownups forget their dreams or they think of childhood is when you really have your dreams. But here I am as an adult having pretty vivid dreams. The other day I had a dream that I was married to my accountant, and that's kind of funny, but what's really funny is that I wasn't married to my accountant. Instead of being married to my husband, I was married to my accountant in addition to being married to my husband, and he just liked being married to me. He traveled a lot, I understood in the dream. And he said that when he was home, he just liked to be married to me. Cari McGee: In the dream, I'm thinking, I'm like, "Okay, this is pretty serious. And if I get caught, how am I going to explain this?" Like, sometimes if somebody gets caught in a crime syndicate or whatever, they can say, "Oh, I was brainwashed or this..." Nothing like that happened. Like, why was I married to two people at once? I have no idea. So thankfully I woke up. Paul Casey: Thankfully I woke up. Cari McGee: And that was not my reality. Paul Casey: That's a good T-shirt message as well. Thankfully, I woke up. Cari McGee: Yes, totally love that. Paul Casey: Especially in these trying times that we're in, maybe we're all going to get to put that on our shirts. Cari McGee: Oh, right, right. That's a good message. Paul Casey: Well, we're going to dive in after checking in with our Tri-City Influencer sponsor. Preston House : Hi, my name is Preston House and I'm the local owner of Papa John's Pizza right here in Tri-Cities. Jesus Melendez: I'm Jesus Melendez, vice president and commercial lender with Community First Bank and HFG Trust. Preston House : When I moved here in 2009 with my family from Boise, Idaho, I knew I wanted to move from a franchise to a local business owner. I've been working with Papa John's since I was 16 years old. So when it came time to open my own location here in my own community, I knew I needed some financial guidance from an organization who understood my needs as a small business owner. Jesus Melendez: Small business owners often have a lot on their plate, employment and retirement plans, payroll, bills. Our mission is to become your financial partner for life and is motivated by providing people in our community like Preston, with all the information and support they need all under one roof. Preston House : It's really simple. No matter what I need, all it takes is one phone call, no automated prompts, no call waiting. It's just a local business, serving another local business. Jesus Melendez: For more information, how Community First Bank and HFG Trust can help you get back on track. Visit wwwcommunity1st.com. That's www community one st.com. Paul Casey: Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. So, Cari, I think we met years ago, our children are the same age, both kids, same age, both a male and a female child, same grade, Wiley Elementary, Enterprise Middle School. Cari McGee: Yes. Hanford High. Paul Casey: Hanford High, right? Cari McGee: Yes. And our daughters are these amazing graduating kids. Paul Casey: Yes. Yes. 2020 kids, which is sad that they don't get the fanfare or some of those rituals that all the other seniors get. Cari McGee: I know. Paul Casey: Man, but we're making the best of it. Cari McGee: Absolutely. Same here. Paul Casey: So help our Tri-City influencer listeners get to know you. Tell us through a couple of your career highlights that led you to where you are today. Cari McGee: Okay. I began in real estate in 2004. And funny story, I decided to get into real estate. I had been in retail for years, but then I decided to get into real estate because there was somebody else that we knew that was in real estate. He was very successful, but I didn't understand why he was very successful. So I thought if this person is successful, I can probably be more successful. Cari McGee: So I borrowed a computer because in those days everything was not online yet, but you had to run a computer program to do your coursework. So I borrowed a PC because we only had Macs and it took me hours and I got it finished. And then I've been selling real estate full-time since 2004. Paul Casey: Wow. Why do you love what you do? Cari McGee: Oh, my gosh. It is a different job every day, number one. Number two, it's such a privilege to be a part of that particular aspect of a person's life because where you live obviously is hugely impactful to whether you move into a particular house as a kid or as a grownup, you're living there. Right? And I know if I had not been a Christian before this, I would be a Christian now because I've seen the way God works and orchestrates things like the money will come in at the last minute. Right? Or a house will be delayed closing because somebody else is supposed to move to town because they're the real owners. It's weird, and it's such a privilege to be a part of plans for people and what's going on for them. It's really, really cool. Paul Casey: That is really rewarding. So throughout that journey, you've hit obstacles to success. I'm sure. Cari McGee: Yes. Paul Casey: What is one of the biggest hurdles you've overcome in your career? Cari McGee: I would say that sometimes there have been people that either they see what I'm capable of and are scared by it or threatened by it and try to kind of rein me in or they don't see it and I haven't seen it either. And so I have not progressed or done as much as I could have/should have because of those other things happening. Does that make sense? Paul Casey: Yeah. What kind of people try to rein you in? Cari McGee: Well, there's a book called The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller, famous book, awesome book. And in 2004 or five, I think, my husband gave it to me as a Christmas present and I read it and I was so excited. I went into my broker at the time and I said, "Oh my gosh, I just read this book, and it's amazing. And I'll implement these programs and plans and I'll make a million dollars and it'll be great." My broker at the time said, "Cari, you're a wife and a mom. You really should just focus on that." Paul Casey: Ooh, wow, ouch. Cari McGee: Yeah, I was like, "Ooh." Well, I'm kind of mad at myself though, too, for... I mean, I didn't say you're right, but I didn't say you're wrong, either. Paul Casey: But it's something well up inside of you like, "I'm going to show everybody." Cari McGee: A little bit. There's all this... Yeah. Paul Casey: You have that competitive juice in you. Cari McGee: Oh, I totally do. I'm super competitive. Super competitive. Paul Casey: Well, leadership is difficult. Being an entrepreneur is difficult. What's one of your biggest ongoing challenges of being a realtor, and what really stretches you to the limit sometimes? Cari McGee: Change used to be my big thing, but now I've learned to embrace it. So, yay change! Paul Casey: Yay. Cari McGee: But I think that understanding that not everyone always looks at things the way you do, right? Everyone comes from a different perspective and a different background. So if I am like, "This is the way it gets done," and sometimes I'll be so far down the path and I'm like, "Where are you? Why are you not here with me?" And they're like, "Well, I still need to understand step four when you're at step eight." I'm like, "Oh, okay." That's hard for me is to not understand that everybody is where I am in the thought process. Paul Casey: They're at a different place in the thought process. Cari McGee: Exactly. Paul Casey: Well, you said you're better with change now. Was there a time where... Tell us about that. Cari McGee: Well, for years, any sort of change, I would just be like, "Oh, this is awful. This is ick." I want everything to stay the same as it was, and let's embrace the status quo and let's not change things. But three years ago, I needed to make a pretty significant change. And I kind of looked around when the dust settled and I was like, "Oh, this is better. This is better than where I was." So change can be good if you stop fighting against it, and instead say, "Let's see where this takes you." Paul Casey: So, that was your mental shift that you had to make, and it sounds like it stayed with you, too. Cari McGee: Oh, 100%. Paul Casey: That it can be way better even though it's going to be painful for a season. Cari McGee: Yeah. 100%. Paul Casey: Awesome. Awesome. Well, if you had a philosophy that you would put front and center on a bulletin board in your office or on the back sticker of your car for everyone to see, what would some of those messages say? Cari McGee: One of my favorite quotes ever is from Paradise Lost by John Milton. "The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." I always think about that because if somebody is... I'm a big believer in mindset. You know, you govern everything that happens to you by how you interpret it and what happens in your brain. If I encounter someone who's like, "Oh, this is bad." And they're gloomy Gus or whatever, it's really hard to not almost shake them and say, "Listen, you're creating this in your brain because literally you can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. It's just all how you perceive it." Paul Casey: So your thoughts are everything. Cari McGee: Yeah. 100%. Paul Casey: Yeah, yeah. There's a life coach, famous one out there named Brooke Castillo. She puts out this formula of CTFAR, which is circumstance happens to you, and then you have a thought. Usually that thought is somewhat automatic. If we can be careful about that thought, which is what you're saying, because it immediately is going to turn into a feeling. And the feeling could bring you down this downward spiral, which is ugly, or it could be a very empowering feeling that like you said would change. Like, what's going to be better if I just go on this journey? Paul Casey: Well, as soon as you do attach the feeling to it, now an action starts to manifest. That could be your body puts out signals that make people go, "Are you okay, Cari?" Or "It seemed like you're offended. Are you angry?" Or whatever that is. You may not like the signals that your body is putting out, or they could really inspire someone. And then the R is the result. And that's what the effect has on everyone around you. So circumstance, thought, feeling, action, and then result. Cari McGee: Makes sense. Paul Casey: So it sounds like that you definitely have that. The John Milton quote really talks about mindset. Anything else that you'd put on the sticker of your car? Cari McGee: Oh, gosh. I'm really blessed because I've always been an optimist. Paul Casey: I know this about you. Cari McGee: You know? Paul Casey: Yeah. Cari McGee: I'm always positive. And so I guess that it would be that just like, "Look on the bright side." There's always a bright side. Find it. Paul Casey: Some of that is natural for you and your personality style, but you have to choose it every day. So if you're talking to these Tri-City influencers, why would you say choose optimism? Cari McGee: Oh, gosh. If you're not choosing optimism, you're choosing pessimism or you're choosing a negative side of realism, and I mean, that just drags you down. It doesn't move you forward. You don't grow where it's dark. You grow where there's light and you move forward where there's light. Think of sunflowers, right? They follow the sun because that's what makes them... You know, that's doing their job. They're optimized, I guess, would be the best word for that. Paul Casey: Things grow where there's light. There's the bumper sticker. We found it. Cari McGee: There you go. Okay. Paul Casey: I love it. I love it. Well, most influencers I know have a bit of a visionary inside of them or that like, "We've got to take the next deal. I got these ideas." So for you, where do you take time to dream about the future or new ideas? Where do you play with that kind of stuff? What does that look like? Cari McGee: Oh, a couple of places. I'm in my car a lot as a real estate agent and so a lot of stuff... I'll be listening to podcasts and something will be said and it'll make me think, and I'll pause the podcast and I'll start to think and dream. One other thing, and this is funny, my husband used to be in broadcasting. So this is where this question comes from, but my whole life, I've interviewed myself. Like, "Well, Cari, tell us about this time." Right? To help me kind of walk through or figure out a problem. I was telling my husband that once, and he said, "Do you ever ask yourself a question you can't answer?" I said, "What?" He said, "Well, that's the mark of a good interview." Okay. The point is not though to be- Paul Casey: To stop. Cari McGee: Right. I'm talking to me. Right? I'm not going to ask myself something that I don't know. But anyway, I'll use that time in the car to do that, and then oftentimes too just out sitting on the patio in the evening, watching the sunset and thinking of the future. Paul Casey: Little patio time. Cari McGee: Yes. Paul Casey: Yeah. Well, that's really interesting. Interview yourself. So Matt McGee, was he sports? What was he? Cari McGee: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep. Paul Casey: Yeah, he was sports. What years were that? Cari McGee: Oh gosh, '94 through '97 I think he was at KEPR. Paul Casey: Okay. Okay. But asking yourself questions. And I do, I find that, too, like... Because you're on social media a lot. Right? Which platforms do you enjoy the most by the way? Cari McGee: Facebook is my milieu. I love it. Paul Casey: Okay. Okay. So, of course, you have to be self-promoting, which is hard. Cari McGee: Correct yes. Paul Casey: Which is hard, and sometimes when you just try to come up with a message on your own, it's difficult. But if you think about the interview, like if I just have somebody ask me a question, for some reason, it makes it easier. Have you found that? Cari McGee: Oh, 100%. Yes. Yes. Paul Casey: I don't know if it just brings out our authenticity or you don't feel quite as plastic to put it out to the world, but if you can get someone else to ask you a question, I think that's just easier. Cari McGee: Well, I mean, I did something at the beginning of when the stay at home order was released. I did a thing for 30 days on Facebook. Every day I asked a new question and it really helped people because the purpose of it was to remind them that we were in this situation, and to think about times in the past when we were not, and times in the future when we won't be. Paul Casey: Oh, I like it. Cari McGee: So that was the purpose of it and it was a different question every day. It was things like, What's your favorite color? Or do you have a middle name? Do you wish it was a different middle name? What would your last name be if you could change it? I mean, so things like that. You're right. It's when you ask questions, people just are... They jump on it. They get so excited. Paul Casey: So a good strategy on social media for engagement, because you've got a lot of engagement from that, too. Right? Cari McGee: I did. I did. Paul Casey: Yeah. So asking a good question. Really the power of a good question is really essential to leadership and of course, to entrepreneurship. That curiosity really brings out the best in people it seems. Well, before we head into our next question on how Cari starts her day, let's shout out to our sponsor. Preston House : Hi, my name is Preston House and I'm the local owner of Papa John's Pizza right here in Tri-Cities. Jesus Melendez: I'm Jesus Melendez, vice president and commercial lender with Community First Bank and HFG Trust. Preston House : When I moved here in 2009 with my family from Boise, Idaho, I knew I wanted to move from a franchise to a local business owner. I'd been working with Papa John's since I was 16 years old. So when it came time to open my own location here in my own community, I knew I needed some financial guidance from an organization who understood my needs as a small business owner. Jesus Melendez: Small business owners often have a lot on their plate employment, retirement plans, payroll, bills. Our mission is to become your financial partner for life and is motivated by providing people in our community like Preston with all the information and support they need all under one roof. Preston House : It's really simple. No matter what I need, all it takes is one phone call, no automated prompts, no call waiting. It's just a local business, serving another local business. Jesus Melendez: For more information, how Community First Bank and HFG Trust can help you get back on track, visit wwwcommunity1st.com. That's www community one st.com. Paul Casey: So Cari, what's your typical morning routine look like before work and once you hit the ground running at work, and if you have any rituals that help you start your day strong? Cari McGee: I actually do. I don't know if you've ever read The Miracle Morning. Paul Casey: I've heard of it. Cari McGee: Okay. It's really, really good, and it talks about having, it can be as few as 10 minutes, or it can be as much as an hour of SAVERS, S-A-V-E-R-S. Paul Casey: Oh, yes. Is it Hal Elrod? Cari McGee: Yes, yes. Paul Casey: Yes. Okay. Cari McGee: S is silence, moment of silence, meditation, prayer, whatever. And then A is affirmations. V is visualization. E is exercise. R is reading and S is scribing or journaling. I started that. It was so funny. I started it three years ago, I think. What I love about it is that it centers me because I wake up and I don't look at my phone first thing. I don't look at my emails. Cari McGee: The problem with that is you immediately, you're in reactive mode when you do that and that's so bad for you, and the hormones of your body when you're waking up and everything. So if you start the day really centering and being grateful and then also dreaming, you're affirming the visualization. Probably it ties into the dream thing. I mean, I have a really active imagination. Visualizing is not a problem for me at all. And so I love that part of it. And then I've always loved to read and then journaling, too. I love to write. And so all of that is what I generally do probably about five days a week. Paul Casey: That's great. So take us through SAVERS again, so our listeners don't have to rewind. Cari McGee: Sure. S is silence. So silence, meaning a moment of silence in prayer or meditation. A is affirmations. V is visualization. E is exercise. R is reading and S is scribing, which is the old-fashioned way of saying journaling. Paul Casey: Yeah. Yeah. I heard Brendon Burchard, he's another podcast guy I listen to. Cari McGee: Oh, I like him. Paul Casey: He said, "We need to take our MEDS every day and MEDS is meditation, exercise- Cari McGee: Yeah. Meditation, exercise, diet, and- Paul Casey: Sleep. Cari McGee: Sleep. Yeah. Paul Casey: Yeah. So SAVERS incorporates that, but even takes it to that next level with the journaling. What does journaling do for you? Cari McGee: Oh, gosh. Well, I mean, Paul, I've always been a writer. I write stories. I write everything. So for me, it's helpful because I will read back over old entries and remember where I was at any given time. And if it was a bad time, then I'm like, "Oh, look at me. I got past this bad time because this is not my reality anymore." Now I'm over here, that happened. It helps me remember and realize that I've gotten through bad times before. Paul Casey: You grew. Cari McGee: Right. I've gotten through bad times and here I am on the other side of it. Maybe sometimes in there, I'll talk about how I did it, but mostly it's just recording how I feel at any given time. Then I'm like, "Oh, I remember that place. I didn't like that place. I'm glad I'm here now." Paul Casey: Yeah, I've heard journal is a place to protest. Cari McGee: Oh, sure. Paul Casey: You know, it's like when you write an email to someone you're mad at and then you don't send it, but it's just getting it done and then you're going to delete it. Cari McGee: Right, exactly. Paul Casey: A journal can also be that place where you're just talking about your feelings to the world, but to no one. And then you don't have to show it to anyone else. It's your own private place is doing this journaling. Cari McGee: I like that. Paul Casey: That's why that's a good one, too. And sleep, well, it's so important, especially during this COVID crisis. A lot of Zoom meetings where you're talking with people on the phone or, and they just... The research says you need eight hours of sleep. I don't know if you're an eight-hour person. Cari McGee: Oh, no. I totally am. I'm a huge sleep believer. It bothers me when people are all like, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." Okay, well, you're going to die sooner. Paul Casey: It's going to catch up to you. Yeah. Cari McGee: So why don't you sleep now? Right? That's my thing. Paul Casey: It's going to catch up to you. So if you're getting by in five, six or seven normally, you need the eight now because boy, you just... Sleep puts your life in perspective, I think, if you have enough adequate rest. And when you're on burnout, you lose your perspective and that's a scary place. You ever been in a place of burnout before where it's just- Cari McGee: Oh, gosh yeah. Yes. Paul Casey: Now what does that feel like for you? Cari McGee: Oh, I get snappy. I get really, really snappy with everyone I love. I'll do a lot of screaming in the car. You know, "Move your 'beep.'" Do you not? My mom always used to do this thing where she would drive and we'd be at the intersection and she'd say, "Beep, beep." And then they would move. And she'd say, "See, Cari, they heard me." I was like, "What?" But I will be like, "Move." You know, and it doesn't work for me. Anyway, I snap. I get pissy. Oh, I get snotty. I have attitude. It's awful. Paul Casey: Any other tips you'd give to listeners about avoiding burnout? Because it's a grind. Running your own business is a grind, but even for those that are in a regular work job, a day job, a burnout is always a threat. Cari McGee: Yep. 100%. Sleep is important. Like we just talked about, you've got to get enough sleep. Otherwise, your last nerve gets reached really fast. But also, one thing that I'm not really good at doing, but would help if I did is take time to notice the things you have done well and where you are now, like you did land that big client or you were able to accomplish this task that you didn't think you could. And then you're like, "Okay, you know what? I really am further along than I thought I'd be." Paul Casey: Yeah. Take time to celebrate, I think is what you're saying. Cari McGee: Yeah. Paul Casey: On my whiteboard, it's my scorecard or whatever I call it, and at the end of every week... I'll do it. I'll do it tomorrow. It's my weekly review, and it's all the things I did get done this week. Of course, I'm just a party of one as a solopreneur. And I just went, "Yes, I got that done, that done, that done." Nobody else sees it, but me, but it makes me feel good like this was another good week. Cari McGee: See, and that's really good. I need to do that. I don't do them enough. Paul Casey: Yeah. When I ask my coaching clients, the very first question I usually ask of them, the icebreaker question is what wins can we celebrate? What did you get crossed off your list? What did you make progress on? Because most people at least can feel like, "Well, I moved the ball forward in these areas." It's not done-done, but it's better than it was last week. So I really love that as a burnout avoidance technique or else you just feel like, again, not anything done. This is a- Cari McGee: Same crap, different day unless you take a minute to say, "Wait, this was a very different day because I accomplished X." Paul Casey: Yes, yes. We're trying to avoid Groundhog Day. Cari McGee: Right. Paul Casey: That is a great way to do it. I love it. Now, family is a big deal to most people. How do you prioritize your family time whether it's with your husband, with your kids and yet still be a high performer at work, right? It's this constant tension. Cari McGee: It is, it is. Well, this is a slightly different thing for women, I think, as opposed to men, especially in my job anyway. I heard a long time ago and I have always lived by this. Say, for example, if I'm going to take my daughter to a dance class or I'm going to do something, right? If I tell a client that that's what I'm doing, then I'm a mom primarily who also happens to work in real estate. Paul Casey: Oh, okay. Cari McGee: Right? But if a dad says, "Hey, I can't show you this house, because I'm going to take my daughter." "Oh my gosh, you're the best dad in the world. Oh, my gosh, you're really taking time for your family. Oh, my gosh, absolutely." Right? So I have always said, even if I am doing something with my kids, nobody knows that. I'm like, "Okay, you know what? I have a lunch appointment." Paul Casey: I'm just unavailable right now. Yep. Cari McGee: Right. Exactly. "I have a lunch appointment. Blah, blah, blah." So I draw those really clear boundaries around stuff. They don't necessarily know what those boundaries are around, but I mean, that's why when I need to do something with kid one or kid two, I'm there when I said I'd be there because that's super important especially when they're littler. My daughter, it's funny. She hasn't been in daycare for... I don't know. She's 18 now. So like, I don't know, 10 years or more, probably 15 years. And she remembers the one time we were late. Cari McGee: Every time we passed her daycare, "Remember when we were late, when you were late to get me?" It's like, "Stop kid." Right? I mean, it's a testament to the fact that her dad and I worked so hard to get them on time that she remembers the one time we were late. Do you know what I mean? As opposed to it being a constant thing. Paul Casey: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, it's our brains who remember those traumatic times- Cari McGee: Oh, my gosh right. Paul Casey: ... more than all the times you're on time and all the gifts you gave them. Cari McGee: Exactly. Paul Casey: Do you have date times with your husband? How do you carve? Do you carve that out or as a realtor, do you have to move blocks of time all over the place? Cari McGee: No. Sometimes... I mean, he'll say, "This Marvel movie is coming out on Saturday and I got tickets for us already" or whatever. And then I'm like, "Okay, that's perfect." Because if I know in advance, then I'll schedule around it, so that's fine. Paul Casey: Okay. So that's blocked out in advance probably through good communication, because there's probably times where you just got to show house and that has to be moved around. Cari McGee: Right. Paul Casey: And of course, Matt is the biggest U2 fan on the planet. Right? Right? Cari McGee: Well, usually. Actually, he's no longer a U2 fan. Paul Casey: No longer? Cari McGee: No. Paul Casey: Oh wow. Okay. Cari McGee: There's a new band called Gang of Youths that he loves. They're from Australia, and they're amazing. Paul Casey: Okay. All right. I was going to say, did that impact your marriage? Cari McGee: Actually, this is funny. I was really worried because I thought... Because they predate me and I thought, "Oh, if he could lose interest in them, my days are numbered." My daughter was like, "Mom, please." I was like, "Oh." Paul Casey: Funny, funny. Okay. So as an influencer, we know you're not a know-it-all. You're a learner, right? Cari McGee: Right. Paul Casey: So where do you go for the wisest advice? These can be live people. Well, they probably all have been live people. Cari McGee: And once live. Paul Casey: I mean, people around us in the Tri-Cities or they're authors, motivators. You've mentioned one already. You've talked a little bit about podcasts. There's probably some industry professionals because what I know about Keller Williams is it's like the best training company, because I get the magazine. I get Trainer Magazine. I know I'm sort of a nerd, but Keller Williams always wins the awards in there. So tell me about your influencers you go to. Cari McGee: Well, one of the number one real estate coaching companies in the world is Tom Ferry coaching. I've had a Tom Ferry coach for four years. Paul Casey: Nice. Cari McGee: I was a Tom Ferry coach for a period of time. I have a new coach now outside that Tom Ferry organization. She's amazing. So ever since I realized how important coaching is, that's really... I mean, holy cow, my business doubled. It was amazing. Paul Casey: Really? Wow. Bam. Cari McGee: Yes. It was really remarkable. So coaches for sure. And then part of that reading of the SAVERS is reading books like Principles by Ray Dalio. Paul Casey: I'm reading that one right now. Yes. Cari McGee: Okay. It's so good. Right? So there's so much to learn, Paul, from everybody. Oh, my gosh, I'm just always reading, and like I said, always podcasting, listening to podcasts with great interviews with people, so that I have to learn more. Paul Casey: Do you have a few favorite books or podcasts that you could recommend so that generally entrepreneurs or leaders would enjoy? Cari McGee: Sure. One is not actually about anything entrepreneurial, but it's called 99% Invisible and it is just stinking great, fascinating trivial information, really good stories. It's been going on for 10 years and I discovered it a year ago, and over successive hikes at Badger, I've made my way through 10 years of that catalog and stuff. It's so good. Paul Casey: Yes. 99% Invisible? Cari McGee: Yes. So good. And then Matt does a walk through or does a podcast called The Walkthrough and it's about real estate stuff, and so that's fantastic. And then also, gosh, I would say Tom Ferry's podcast is really good, too. Paul Casey: Okay. These are good ones. Cari McGee: Oh, sorry. And Gary Keller does one and I can't remember what it's called, but it's really, really good. Paul Casey: I have listened to Gary Keller's before. Yes, it is good. So finally, Cari, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing or gaining more influence? Cari McGee: Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. I mean, it's really scary, but you are a better person on the other side of whatever it is and your whole life will be better on the other side of whatever you're scared about. Paul Casey: Yeah. I think I've actually heard that as a quote. Cari McGee: Yeah. That's better on the side other of fear. Paul Casey: Everything you want is on the other side of fear. Yeah, yeah. That's great meme. And has that been true for your life? Cari McGee: Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Because again, as I said earlier, I used to hate change. It was really in the last three years that I've changed a lot of stuff and became less resistant to change, and that's really when the growth started to happen. I'm in a place now where I didn't know I could be where things are fantastic and only getting better. Paul Casey: So if someone would say, "But Cari, I'm just scared. I see this obstacle in front of me," what would be a baby step that would get them? Either what's their self-talk need to be or what would you say to hit the go button for them? Cari McGee: One thing I heard a long time ago, which was really, really good was that as babies, we all learn to walk and what if the first time we learned to walk and we fell down, we just said to ourselves, "All right, well, I guess I'm not a walker." Right? Paul Casey: Yeah. Cari McGee: No, none of us does that because when we're babies, we don't understand that there are points where you get scared. Babies don't have fear like that. They're just like, "Okay, this is where I have to go." And you have to tap into that primal part of you that's just like, "All right, here we go. Let's go. Let's do it. I'm a baby and I'm moving forward." Paul Casey: Love it, love it. So how can our listeners best connect with you? Cari McGee: Call me, text me, email me. Phone is (509) 430-5342. Email is cari@carimcgee.com. So first, then first and last. Paul Casey: Fantastic. Well, thanks again for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great optimistic place and keep leading well. Cari McGee: Awesome. Thanks, Paul, so much. Paul Casey: Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. It's from The Wiseman Group. What's interesting is there's a term called an Accidental Diminisher so you can actually take a little test to see if you inadvertently are becoming an accidental diminisher of the people that you lead. Even though your heart's in the right place and you have good intentions, there are some things that we can do to actually diminish the people around us. Of course, the author is trying to get you to be a multiplier instead of a diminisher. So you can check that out at The Wiseman Group. Paul Casey: Again, this is Paul Casey, and I want to thank my guest, Cari McGee from Keller Williams for being here today on the Tri-City Influencer Podcast. We also want to thank our TCI sponsors and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible, so we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our community. Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. It's Anthony D'Angelo. And he says, "Become addicted to constant and never ending self-improvement." So until next time, KGF, keep growing forward. Speaker 3: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org for a consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward. Speaker 3: Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done everyday by offering you his free control my calendar checklist. Go to www.takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool or open a text message to 72000 and type the word "growing." Paul Casey: The Tri-Cities Influencer podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.

It's a bumper show this week as I chat with Tim Stillman about players returning to training, augmented reality and soundtracks for Premier League games, and the lack of ticket refund clarity from the club.Then I'm joined by Matt Spiro to talk about his new book 'Sacré Bleu Zidane to Mbappé – A football journey' – a look at the ups and downs of France and French football between 1998 and 2018. You can also win a copy of the book in an exclusive competition. You can buy the book from here: https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/sacre-bleuAnd finally, it's broadcasting legend Pat Sharp who talks about his career in radio, TV, from Top of the Pops to Capital Radio to Fun House and loads more.Follow Tim @StillbertoFollow Matt @MattSpiroFollow Pat @PatSharp See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Then I'm running too if that's a consolation 'cause I can still see you

First up on this week's show, Andrew Allen to discuss the framework of the return of Premier League football, the protocols for training, players signing consent forms and the impact on finances. We also chat a bit about the Bundesliga coming back this week, if there's a particular team we're going to follow, and what we might learn from what happens in Germany.Then I'm joined by Tom Findlay of Groove Armada to talk music, DJing, the Arsenal and lots more besides.Follow Andrew @aallensport and check out his podcast @leftfield_podFollow Groove Armada @GrooveArmada and check out their brand new single here. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week's show we have two guests called Nigel. First, Nigel Phillips of the Arsenal Supporter's Trust to discuss a report they issued this week about the potential financial implications of Covid-19 and the shutdown of football on Arsenal. We talk about revenue streams drying up, playing behind closed doors, the money that the club spend each month without any income, the famous cash reserves, the reported 'cash injection' from KSE and what to expect when football does eventually return.Then I'm joined by Nigel Mitchell, who many of you know as the man at pitch-side during Arsenal home games. We chat about getting the radio bug, what a typical match day is like for him, interviewing legends, doing a dream job for any Arsenal fan and loads more.Follow Nigel Mitchell @MrNigelMitchell See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Doug Karsch joins the podcast and gives his thoughts on the virtual draft as well as is first six picks. Then I'm joined by the Runyans. Jon Sr. joins us first and shares some of his experiences as a player and former Congressman. His son, Jon Jr. then talks about the influence his dad had on him, when he fell in love with the game of football, and his own dream of being an NFL Football player.

Kia Ora! Today we're talking Aotearoa New Zealand Geography because everyone thinks we're a little country where the weather is always the same. I'm here to correct your facts because Size Matters and we're bigger than you think! Then I'm going to tell a little bit about some news highlights here in NZ. Thanks to my Gems listening out there: James, Scott, Glenn, Lucas and Jason. You're my shiny in a dark unsparkling time. Find me under @julzburgisser on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as well to see the craziness that Julz is up to with #dressolationdiaries Aroha nui. Ka kite anō. Kia kaha. Xx --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jewelsfromnz/message

Hey Spirit Girls! Ready to receive help unblocking yourself?If you've felt like you're a bit 'blocked' when it comes to Intuition & working with Spirit - I'm ready to help you! Even if you've just felt a bit 'low vibe' about previous approaches to working with Spirit (& you're wanting it to feel more fun!) Then I'm here for it! It's also gonna feel super empowering if you're an Empath... Listen now to hear all about it & If you're wanting to register for Module 1 Of Gifted Experts (Free) then sign up here: https://bit.ly/registermodule1giftedexpertsLove, Jessie x

Welcome to Golf Talk Live! Tune in Thursday 6:00 PM Central. This week starts with a great panel discussion on Coaches Corner. Here's this week's panel: Pete Buchanan, John Hughes & Paul Kaster, Then I'm joined by my special guest: Dave Shultz – CEO of Nextlinks More on Dave: Dave Shultz spent more than two decades as an electrical engineer and operations executive at General Electric. As an aviation electronics technician in the United States Navy, Shultz discovered a knack for problem solving on the avionics systems of A-6 and F/A-18 aircrafts. The seasoned technologist was also a key team member on the Boeing 787 development project while at General Electric. On St Patrick’s Day 2015, Shultz spotted his pot of gold, and began the trek over the rainbow. Join me LIVE Thursdays from 6:00 - 8:00PM Central http://www.blogtalkradio.com/golftalklive Or listen on these social media platforms:  iTunes , Stitcher, Tunein, Castbox, TalkStreamLive & Spotify.

Have you ever asked yourself why you are working too many hours? And why do you sometimes still end up feeling you’re not getting the job done? Well, you might want to take a closer look at how you’re spending your time and energy because it’s actually possible to get things done without spending all your resources. You want to know how? In this episode, Dean talks about the value of using your energy in the best possible way, and how it inspired a lot of his clients to use their energy efficiently. ------- Automated Transcript Below: Dean 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes calm and prosulum.com. P R O S U L U M .com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this using more energy doesn't mean you're more productive. That and more coming up. Well, good morning. Man, it is getting a little warmer here in Central California and that is that is not necessarily a good thing. I love the cold and so it's a little bit of a downer that things are getting warmer I want to I want to see more rain more cold. However, however, All of the seeds and stuff that I've planted. With all that being said and done, that means that we will be having more of a crop. Because the winter is bringing spring, right? I'm looking at that I'm actually looking at one area that I planted right now see if anything's popping up. So I created these food forests. So try at least I'm trying to start creating food forests, so that in different places where we're at there, there's there. It's not just it's not just a normal homestead, not just normal farm, but actually, you know, an actual food force that I can go walk to and go pick out some lettuce, go pick out whatever. So anyway,takes a lot less energy to do that. But you have to have the right conditions. You have to have the system that's already set up around trees. So on and so forth, and it kind of leads me on to what we're going to be talking about today. So yesterday was really cool. This. I was. So yesterday I went and did some jujitsu. So some Brazilian jujitsu, which if you've been listening for a while, you know that I've been doing it almost almost a year now. I love it. It's such a good way to exercise a good way to also learn more about yourself and, and develop skills of self defense. One of the best it just I was so hesitant at first, when I first started doing the whole jujitsu thing, but now I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is great. Why did I ever not do this before? So So it's interesting because the It's New Year's right? And so with New Year's comes a whole mess of people who have new year's resolutions, and they want to get into shape or they want to learn something new. They want to start doing something new, right? And And that leads to bigger class sizes. Not even just bigger class size and not only just bigger class sizes, but it also leads to the idea that the it also leads to new people who who are brand new to the sport but might be totally fit, they might be muscular and fit and wrestle or do whatever, they come to the sport and it it's a great way and a great time to test what you actually know. Okay, so.So after class,every after every class that we have on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we do a bit of rolling we do about maybe a half hour of what we call rolling, it's sparring. It's, it's it's actually doing jujitsu with each other and trying to submit each other, right and so there This one guy not gonna say his name, but he is a he's definitely fit. And you can tell that he does something like CrossFit. or something of that nature. And the guy is, I want to say is probably about the same age as me maybe between 30 and 40 around that, that and when I when I see it, like the initial reaction is like oh crap this guy's good at this guy's gonna destroy me right this guy's going to absolutely destroy me because he's all fit and and he also I think wrestles and all that stuff so so it's after class we finished class I went and said hi to him and stuff like that and asked him you know, Hey, have you done any martial arts at all? Have you done Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at all and he did. I think one time, one class before and so it was interesting. So my like I said, My initial reaction was, oh my gosh, this guy's because he was definitely ripped. He definitely was a is a let me turn on airplane mode real quick Hold on one second just had a telemarketers to try and call me. So and so he. So anyway, we I'm like hey, well let's roll and internally I'm like ah crap is gonna suck and you know all of my year of trading is gonna go for nothing. And so we start and he's a wrestler so he knows how to do clinching and stuff, stuff like that. So we start and we clinch and the cool thing is that that he, I kind of got to feel them out a little bit. And right away I ended up getting them in my guard, which in jujitsu is a dominant position. It might not look like a dominant position. But it is a dominant position. It's basically where I have my back on the ground which for wrestlers in wrestling you don't want to do that's the whole point of You know, you want to pin someone to the ground, right? But in jujitsu, having your back on the ground is totally fine. So it's when you have your back and your ground on the ground and your legs are wrapped around the person. Okay? That might not look like a dominant position, but it's actually a dominant position in jujitsu. So, so we're going, and it's cool because he's trying to get he's trying to get out of my guard and I'm constantly putting him off balance this way and that way, and then I was able to then sweep him over and get into mount which is a very dominant position. It's one of the best positions where you have a lot of different opportunities to do different arm locks, armbars chokes, and all that other jazz. So when I get into mount, the first thing that he does, is he wraps his arms around me so mount is basically just so you have an idea of what mount is full mount. It's where my so I'm, I'm on top of him and my legs are headed want to say it I'm on I'm, I'm on top of him, I'm in a position where if I wanted to pound on his face with punches, he can barely do anything. So my legs are kind of North, kind of in the area around his abdominal around his abdomen, right? And then my legs come, I try and wrap them around his legs so that he can't really so I can't really throw me off or anything like that. If you Google Brazilian Jiu Jitsu mount position or something like that, you'll see what it is. But anyway, so he's there, but the first thing he does is he is he goes and wraps his arms around me to hold me close to him, which is sort of what you can do. If someone's punching you you definitely want to do that because now I can't get any strength. I can't get any space to I can't get any space to start start landing punches or anything like that. So he's pulling me close. And the thing was that he's squeezing at the same time he's like her, and it feels to him like he is making a difference. He is constricting. He's a boa constrictor constricting all of my oxygen and making it to where. I'm just going to pass out and give up right?Well, that's what he might be thinking. But in my head, all I'm thinking at that point is yes, yes, young Skywalker. Please keep doing that for the energy is leaving your body. So as he's doing that on thinking as a as literally, yes, yes, yes, keep doing that. Keep doing that because you're going to get very tired You're expending all that energy trying to squeeze me in a position that is in a position that is not going to do anything for you or for me, it is very easy to it's very, it just you're making it easy for me to win later on, because that squeezing is not going to choke me. It's not going to constrict my airflow or anything like that. And so he keeps doing he keeps doing that keeps doing that keeps doing that I just wait and wait it out and I can tell you starting to get tired. So now I move in for different submissions. And ultimately, ultimately, I submit the guy and one of the first tips I gave him was.Don't try to escape don't try Don't try to squeeze don't try it like if you're in a position where you're not. If you're in a position where you are not The dominant one, the person really cannot submit you cannot do anything unless they move first. Okay, so say I got you into mount. Well, now I got you locked in and you're not going to go anywhere. However, if I actually want to do anything to you, if I want to make it to where you, I armbar you or do some kind of submission, hold on you, I have to move first, which means I have to start creating space, I have to start creating the, the, the in setting the tempo of everything. And as soon as that happens, now, I can if I was on the bottom, if I was if I was the one that was in the non dominant position, I can start doing things that take advantage of that space that you just created. But if I try and escape, I try and do all this stuff. I try and move around. I try and squeeze, I try and do all this stuff. Get me out of here, get me out of this. I don't like it. I don't like it, I don't like it. Then I'm using all of that energy and wasting it. And while it might seem like I'm being productive, it might seem like I'm like I'm squeezing and choking, and I'm doing all this other stuff. It is not I'm actually losing energy in the long run. So why is this important? It's important because we do this a lot in business. Right? We do this a lot in business. We all know whether it's you or whether it's somebody else. We all know those workaholics right. We all know those people who are so proud that they pulled an all nighter that they're so proud that they were up till two o'clock in the morning working on something and finally got it done. Right. We know those people that that stay you know if you're in your normal in a Normal nine to five job. We know those people who stayed till 910 11 at night trying to finish things up and then they come back and they're like, yo, yeah, I was here till 910 or 11. And then they make you feel bad for from working normal hours. They make you feel bad for working eight to five or nine to five or whatever it is. Right? Well, those people are those are just like those people who are spending energy and getting nothing done. They're spending energy and, and that energy that's being spent is actually being wasted. The fact that they even have to stay that long is an indicator that there's something wrong in the system. There's something wrong in the process. Okay. Just because you work hard on something, doesn't mean you're doing more doesn't mean you're produced. More, it means that it simply means that you're working hard on something that's it doesn't mean anything else. And so, what's more, one of the things I love about jujitsu, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, is that everything is strategic. Everything is built on leverage, everything is built on a system of techniques, a system of if you move just one inch in this direction, because of how you have your body, their their body will flip over, or their body will board or you can choke them or you can do all of these different things. Right. So the the big thing in business is to pay attention if you're working hard Something if you're working on something in something that's done over and over and over again, especially, it's a big indicator that you're wasting a lot of energy. If you have a team, you should have a standard operating procedure that your team can then use to do that thing, so you're not doing it. So now you can step back, be more strategic, find points of leverage, and have your business grow and excel in so many different ways. If you're working hard, and I'm not saying hard work is not it. Trust me hard work is great when it is necessary. Hard work is great when it's necessary. But if you're just working, if you're the boss, and you're working, working, working, working 12 hours a day, every day on the same thing and it's stuff that your team can do or you are stuff that That you're doing over and over and over again and you think your team can do it. More than likely you're wasting energy. More than likely you're wasting you're wasting all that time. But if you just step back, created a process for it, a documented process, step by step. You could offload that that in many, many other things. So that every ounce of energy that you're spending every single ounce of energy you are spending is spent in an efficient and beautiful and amazing way. So right now what are you doing? Where you are just you are constantly constantly spinning energy. You're constantly doing, doing doing doing right. What what are you doing right now? That Oh, over and over and over again. And you use it as an excuse over and over and over again. You're doing these few things that's keeping you in the office for 12 hours. take a hard look and really truly see especially if you're the one if you've learned how to do this thing over time, more than likely somebody else can do it. What what are you doing right now? That if you simply handed it off created a process for it. That energy that you're spending can be best used for something else. This is Dean Soto freedom in five minutes go check out freedominfiveminutes.com. We have a lot of amazing stuff there. masterclass. We have our business process scorecard, go check that out. Go to prosulum.com, P R O S U L U M .com if you want to be able to do these processes create these processes. is in five minutes, in as little as five minutes,give them step by step have someone do it for you. So you never have to do it. Again. Get a virtual systems architect that's dedicated to you. They're like a, like a virtual assistant with superpowers. And go check that out. And if you if you go if you if you try if you go to pro slim calm and you try to exit it will come up with a course and brand new course that you can subscribe to. It's a four day series it'll teach you how to create all these processes teach you how to create step by step processes so you don't have to do this stuff and waste all that energy on stuff that doesn't matter. Alright, so this Dean Soto freedom in five minutes.com This is the freedom in five minutes podcast. I will catch you on the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.

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

Dinner in French: My Recipes By Way Of FranceBy Melissa Clark Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.Melissa Clark: Hi, I'm Melissa Clark. I am a food reporter for the New York Times and a cookbook author and my latest cookbook is called "Dinner in French: My Recipes By Way Of France."Suzy Chase: You are the most prolific cookbook writer I've had on the podcast with more than 40 cookbooks under your belt and you write for the New York Times Food Section in addition to your weekly column called, "A Good Appetite." This conversation is going to be a two-parter. First let's chat about your new cookbook, "Dinner in French." Then I know we're all desperate to hear some clever ways to use our pantry items while we're at home during the coronavirus quarantine. You first fell in love with France and French food as a child thanks to your great aunt Martha and great uncle Jack. Talk a little bit about your annual summer vacations and how that came about?Melissa Clark: It was a really crazy childhood. My parents were both psychiatrists and this was back in the 70s and 80s. In those days when you were a psychiatrist you had the whole month of August off. If you had any kind of mental issues in August you were stuck, you had to wait until September but it was great for us as a family because we took the month and we would travel. My parents fell in love with France before we were born thanks to my great uncle Jack and my great aunt Martha who took them to France when they were graduating from medical school. They fell in love with France and they took us, they took my sister and me, every single summer. What we did, and this was really unusual back in the day, was we house exchanged. Now people think, "Oh house exchange, Airbnb," they're used to it but especially this was in the early 80s. There was no internet so just imagine typing out letters to strangers in France. There was a directory so you would find these people who were willing to exchange houses but that was all. There was just a list of names.Melissa Clark: We would send these letters and then we'd wait a few months to get letters back. Then we would arrange a telephone call and eventually arrange an exchange but it was this leap of trust and faith, which I don't think, I mean it was strange back then and even now can you imagine if you were going to exchange houses with someone you would Google them and you would find out everything you could about them and you would see aerial pictures of the house. We just went in blind but despite that it was amazing. So there we were, out family of four living in these French people's houses and the French would come to our house and they would take care of our cat, we would take care of their vegetable garden or whatever it was and it was great. It was this really immersive cultural experience every single August. What we did as a family when we got to France was we cooked. We did not cook at home in Brooklyn together. We did not have time. My parents were professionals. As psychiatrists they worked late into the evening. My sister and I were kind of on our own for dinner most of the time.Melissa Clark: In France we ate every meal together and we cooked it together and that's where I learned how to cook. For me, cooking, my first memories and my first love of cooking, it all happened in France.Suzy Chase: In the cookbook how do you pair the way you ate growing up in Brooklyn with French cuisine?Melissa Clark: To me it was the same thing. I didn't have a division of, "Okay this is Brooklyn food and this is French food." To me it was all the same. It was all, "These are the flavors of my childhood" and the flavors of my childhood were my grandmother's food and when my parents did cook. I grew up in a Jewish household so my grandmother's food to me is very Ashkenazi Jewish. I remember baked apples and Shabbat dinner with brisket and latkes and kugel and gefilte fish, you know? That was all very much part of my childhood and not to mention the Brooklyn flavors that I was having and Brooklyn was diverse even back then. I mean, Brooklyn is way diverse now but back in the 80s we were still going out, we were going out for Chinese food, we're getting dim sum, we were going to Lundy's, which Lundy's was this great old fish seafood shack, or not shack, restaurant in Sheepshead Bay and we would get these amazing biscuits and DiFara's Pizza which now is a cult place but back then it was one of our local pizzerias that we would go and get this incredible Sicilian grandma pies.Melissa Clark: It was this mishmash and then French food was just part of that. It's like, oh, we would go to France and we would eat crepes and it was all part of the same thing. So when I develop recipes and think about cooking I'm using all of those flavors from my childhood to create something and I've never really written about it in an organized way until Dinner in French, until this cookbook.Suzy Chase: What made you decide to write this cookbook?Melissa Clark: I spent most of my life a little bit embarrassed about the French connection in my past mostly because I am embarrassed to tell you that my French is terrible. Any time I would tell someone, I'd say I spent every August in France they'd say, "Oh you must speak French" and I even spent a semester in college in Paris and I could never master it. I'm not great at languages, I'm also not great at music. I don't have the ear. I study and I study and I study and I speak passable French. I get around, I'm fine, but I'm not fluent and that lack of fluency, especially because my husband is actually fluent in French which kind of makes it worse, makes me not want to admit to being as close to French food as I am.Melissa Clark: It's a funny thing but as an adult, finally I've grown up and I've decided, "You know what? This is actually part of me and part of my childhood and I'm going to get over the fact that I don't speak it very well" because you know what I realized? I can cook in French. I cannot conjugate but I can, give me a French kitchen and any French ingredient and I can cook with it and make it my own. When I'm cooking, I call it "Cooking in French" you know? I can do it by feel, I can do it by sensory, it's just part of me. Because I am who I am, I'm also very practical. Whenever I think about cooking in French I'm also thinking about how to do it a little more easily. I'm not thinking about classic technique. You know what I'm thinking about? I'm thinking about we forget that French people make dinner every single night for their families, you know? It's not just fancy restaurants and that's, when I say I "Cook in French" that's the food I'm cooking. French home cooking through this like, Brooklyn lens of even more practicality and making it, so streamlining the dishes, making them very accessible so I don't have to do a lot of cleanup after all.Melissa Clark: I'm always thinking, "Can I eliminate a pot? Can I do this a little more easily?" Then I'm adding different flavors in from Brooklyn but also just from my life, from my travels. Cooking in French, it's a very broad definition of what I consider this kind of French food to be.Suzy Chase: It's kind of like your autobiography.Melissa Clark: Yeah in a way. It's all the different parts. It really is. Although maybe we're going to leave out the Swedish first husband because he doesn't really factor in. There's no Swedish recipes in here.Suzy Chase: Yeah.Melissa Clark: Except for that.Suzy Chase: Yeah, we don't need him.Melissa Clark: We don't need him.Suzy Chase: No. I think this cookbook, probably more than your others, really highlights your lighthearted exploration of flavors and cuisines. So many cookbooks I find, especially foreign ones, are so serious, right?Melissa Clark: Yeah it's true. Well you know when you're writing about a foreign to you cuisine, so maybe you are writing about someone else's culture or maybe it's your culture and you're trying to present it to people who are not familiar with it, I think there is actually a big weight on your shoulders because you need to do justice, right? That's important and that is, especially right now in this age of learning about cultural appropriation in food, this is a really important issue. You want to take culture and people's culture and your own culture very seriously but I kind of get a pass on France because it is something that I learned in my childhood and it's also something that I'm not trying to be authentic. That's not my goal here. I'm not trying to present French culture. I would never, ever have undertaken this book if I was trying to do that. I'm trying to give you a sense of who I am as a cook and I am a lighthearted cook to be honest. I love to play with ingredients, I love to play with flavors.Melissa Clark: One thing I read about in this cookbook is I remember when I was a kid, right, we'd come back to Brooklyn and my parents would make these amazing Julie Child type gourmet dinners. They were using Julia's recipes and they were very like, serious about following the recipe. Or maybe they'd use Jacques Pepin, but then the next day with the leftovers I think my dad had made the coq au vin and my mom was taking it and she was slathering it on challah. I think my dad was maybe adding some soy sauce. They were so free in what they did as cooks and I really adopted that. I'm not afraid to play with flavor, I'm not afraid to play with technique. I will take a dish apart and put it back together if I like it better that way but again, I'm not trying to represent French culture. I'm trying to let other cooks know how I do it.Suzy Chase: Dinner in French, I love your introductions to each recipe. Especially the one for Grated Carrot Salad with Preserved Lemon and Coriander on Page 71. Can you talk a little bit about that?Melissa Clark: Basically when you go to Paris and you order a plate of crudités or really anywhere in France and you get all these different little composed salads and I ate a ton of crudités when I was a student in Paris during college because I was also eating a ton of Croque Monsieurs and ham and cheese sandwiches and I was eating a lot of baguettes and boy, was I eating those Pain au Chocolat, right? I was a little worried about balancing my day. I was always concerned about my weight. I mean, this is just something that as a woman you grow up with and I took it in. Also members of my family are heavy so I knew that if I wanted to eat well I needed to eat carefully. This was just always something on my mind. When I was a student and I was in college I would say, "All right if I'm going to eat all of this cheese and oh my God did I eat the cheese? I'm going to have to have crudités a lot. A lot of vegetables." But I fell in love with it because salads in France are so delicious.Melissa Clark: There's so much, especially better than the salads I had in the 80s in New York. We were still kind of gearing up as a food culture. Especially in an every day, you know, fancy restaurants had great salads but when you were a student and you went to get a salad in a diner in New York you certainly didn't get the same kind of salad that you got when you were a student and you went to get a plate of crudités in a café in Paris. You got grated carrots with this delicious vinaigrette, you got sliced beets, you got potatoes, you got lettuce with a bright mustards dressing. It was all so delicious. When I got back I started making this crudités salad, which is what I called it, which is basically grated carrots with a mustardy, yummy dressing. I put herbs in it like coriander, coriander seeds and also cilantro but it was so great. It didn't even feel like I was dieting it just felt like I'm eating something that I really, really love.Melissa Clark: That recipe, which is very evocative to me of my student days is in this book and I absolutely think everybody should make it and then you should go eat the Croque Monsieur casserole because that's how I would do it. It's like a little bit of vegetable, a little bit of ham and cheese and then it all kind of balances out.Suzy Chase: Speaking of Croque Monsieur, I made it the other day, it's on page 42 and can you talk a little bit about that recipe?Melissa Clark: Yeah so Croque Monsieur are, this was the sandwich, I ate so many Croque Monsieur when I was in Paris. It's a ham and cheese sandwich but it's toasted and then they put bechamel on top. So bechamel, a white sauce, cheesy white sauce on top of your sandwich and then they broil it and it gets all golden. It's so good. I mean, I'm sorry, our grilled cheeses are good, I love a grilled cheese any which way but Croque Monsieur might be my favorite. What I did was I took those flavors and I put them into a casserole. So you make little ham and cheese sandwiches and you line them up in a casserole dish and then you pour bechamel over the whole thing and cheese and yeah. It's really good. Bubbly, hot, cheesy, hammy, the perfect brunch dish. I mean, I think it's perfect for supper, too. I mean, it's all a light supper but it's kind of one of those easy, everything goes in the oven casserole suppers. Then all you do is serve it with a big green salad on the side and you've got the best dinner. Glass of Beaujolais wouldn't hurt.Suzy Chase: Also I think this is a good recipe for right now so we can still find the white sandwich bread around at our bodega, you can still get sliced ham and I think this is great for our pandemic situation right now.Melissa Clark: Yeah, it's one of those pantry staple recipes that we need, everybody needs to really start thinking about clever ways to use pantry stable items. I'm thinking about that a lot myself. I mean, right now I'm really lucky. I'm in Brooklyn, you're I don't know how it is in the West Village, grocery store lines are long but we still can get everything and hopefully that will remain. At the same time, we don't want to go shopping too often. You want to use up all these pantry staples that you stocked your kitchen with.Suzy Chase: Your mother taught you how to get dinner on the table fast and make it taste good with what you had in the house. This is what we're grappling with right now as many of us are stuck in the home during the coronavirus pandemic. In your home in Brooklyn how are you dealing with the idea of potentially cooking three meals a day for weeks with limited access to the outside world?Melissa Clark: I'm pretty prepared. I did stock my pantry. I wrote about it for the Times and I practiced what I preached. I have a lot of beans and pastas and rice and canned fish. I'm very lucky in that I have a separate freezer in my basement. I know it's extremely lucky so I've got meat in there-Suzy Chase: So lucky.Melissa Clark: I know, I know, it's like if I just had a little freezer, I know you're in the West Village with a small freezer-Suzy Chase: Yep.Melissa Clark: That's much harder. I feel like I'm actually ahead of the game a little bit but at the same time we all have the same limitations on, "Okay all right now what? We've got our pasta and our rice and our tuna and now what are we going to do with our pasta and our rice and our tuna?" I think my job going forward is to help people think of creative ways to use everything so that we don't end up getting bored. Cooking can be a very calming process, especially right now when things are scary out there. Cooking calms you, at least it does for me, and it's also very creative. I'm hoping that people will come out of this more eager to cook, a little less afraid to try something new and I mean, also you're not cooking for entertaining, which is very different. I think most of us spend a lot of our time cooking for friends and we're thinking about what other's are going to think of what we're making but it's just for us, it's just for family. I'm hoping that people are going to use this time to experiment, get comfortable cooking things and I'm going to be there. I'm here to help.Suzy Chase: So much tuna.Melissa Clark: So much tuna.Suzy Chase: So much tuna. I don't think I'm alone when I say I have over 10 cans of tuna right now. How about that tuna dip of yours? I think it's in your dinner cookbook?Melissa Clark: Yeah. Oh, see tuna dip is great. My mother used to make this salmon mousse recipe when I was growing up. I think it was a Julia Child recipe. She would take, I think she would use canned salmon actually and put it in the blender with mayonnaise and she'd set it with gelatin and cream and it was this beautiful thing. My version of that is almost more like an Italian tonnato sauce. I take a can of tuna, I put it in the blender with olives and capers and yes, some mayonnaise and herbs and garlic and I make this tuna dip, which if you put it in the fridge it gets cold and firm and you can spread it on bread like a pate but you can also use it as a pasta sauce, you could put it on top of rice. It's fantastic if you add a little extra oil, so you make it very, very runny and you use it as a dip for veggies. It's just so versatile and so flavorful and it's like when you're getting tired of tuna casserole and tuna salad sandwiches, this is the dip to make you ... It has so much flavor in it you're like, "Oh, right. This is why I love tuna." It also has anchovies.Suzy Chase: Let's say we have a big tub of steel cut oats. What can we do with them?Melissa Clark: Steel cut oats are great to have. Not just for breakfast, either. Yes, you can make them for breakfast. I've been baking them lately which I really like. I wrote about this in The Times recently of baked steel cut oats. It's pretty much the same as if you do them on the stove except that you throw them in the oven and then you don't have to worry about them. You can season the cooking water, well first of all you can use milk if you have some but you can also add spices and I added some almond butter recently to the cooking water. Your general proportions for steel cut oats is one to three. So one cup of oats to three cups of water and you just bring it to a simmer either on the stove or you add boiling water to a casserole dish, cover it with foil and throw it in the oven for an hour. Either way but just think about what you can season that water with, different toppings but also don't forget oats are fantastic savory.Melissa Clark: If you think about polenta, we love savory polenta, oats can be used in the exact same way. Try cooking them in broth or maybe with a couple of garlic cloves and a bay leaf and then use that yummy savory kind of mushy starch as you would a bed of polenta and just throw lots of stuff on top of it. It absorbs, it's just like a great sort of bed for yummy other flavors. Or like mashed potatoes, same kind of thing, mushy, comforting, savory, add lots of butter and salt. It's just, oh, and Parmesan too. Risotto, think of it as risotto except it's oats.Suzy Chase: We all have tons of pasta on hand. Help please.Melissa Clark: I know right.Suzy Chase: So much.Melissa Clark: Yes, I mean, pasta never gets old. I'm never tired of making pasta. When you think about, I mean, all of those wonderful dishes. You can go to Italy for a month and eat pasta every day and not get tired of it and you can do the same thing in your kitchen except you're not, unfortunately, in Italy which is I guess right now good but in general bad. Think about the simplest Cucina Povera recipe, right, which is just things that you have in your pantry anyway. Maybe you have a can of anchovies, maybe you have some bread crumbs. Right now this is a time to be saving those bread scraps and making bread crumbs if you don't already. Saute’ them in garlic with some Parmesan and that with some olive oil is a fantastic pasta topping. I use little bits of leftovers as the base for pasta sauces all the time. Those left over roasted veggies I'll chop up, saute’, add some butter and throw them on top of pasta. You probably have cans of tomatoes if you love pasta you should have some plum tomatoes on hand and simmering those into a sauce of course is just the most basic, elemental thing you can do.Melissa Clark: If you have access to a sunny windowsill I would say now's the time to get some basil seeds and start planting and even if you don't-Suzy Chase: That's so smart.Melissa Clark: Maybe you'll have pesto in a month. My neighbor works at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and unfortunately they closed, which I was hoping I'd be able to walk outside in their gardens but we can't. However, she did bring me some basil seeds before they closed so I'm about to embark on a whole exciting little gardening trip here in my Brooklyn spot, see if I can grow. I have the brownest thumb. People, it's funny because when people call me up, my friends call me and say, "Okay I'm looking at a chicken. What do I do?" Because they have no idea how to cook and I get those calls a lot from my good friends. I'm going to do the same to my friends who garden. "All right I've got the basil seeds. Now what do I do?" So I'm very sympathetic if you can't make a chicken so please be sympathetic and teach me how to grow something.Suzy Chase: Tell us about your sardine and tomato toast recipe on page 135 in Dinner in French.Melissa Clark: Sardine toasts are my, I mean, they're my go to dish. We probably eat sardine toast once a week under normal circumstances. Not even when we're eating from the pantry, just on a normal week because we love sardines. This sardine toast recipe in Dinner in French is almost provincial in feeling because it has tomatoes and garlic and basil and sliced onions but I want to start with the basic sardine toast for people out there who are listening and they've just got their sardines and their bread and what do you do, right? You toast your bread, and this is important to use the best bread you can. Crusty like a baguette or any kind of country bread if you've got it. Toast it until it's crisp and then take a halved garlic clove and rub it all over and the garlic will get in the bread. Then you season the bread with some kind of fat. I think I used olive oil in the cookbook but you can also use butter and the fat helps spread the flavor.Melissa Clark: Then you add a little salt and if you have a tomato that's decent you can cut the tomato in half and rub those tomato guts all over that bread, almost like a Pan Con Tomate like a Catalan bread and tomato dish. We're bringing Spain in here, we're bringing France in here, we're bringing Italy. This is a very cross cultural dish but you don't even need the tomato. Just, you've got your garlic and your fat, your oil or your butter, you lay your sardines down with some thinly sliced onion or scallion or shallot and maybe some herbs if you have it or maybe some sliced tomatoes if you have them. Even if you don't, the elements are bread, garlic, fat, so say olive oil, sardines, some kind of thinly sliced onion material, salt and pepper and another drizzle of olive oil. It is divine.Suzy Chase: Eggs. Should we be stocking up on eggs?Melissa Clark: Yeah, eggs last forever. I mean, not forever but they'll last a month. They last a really long time. Get a lot of eggs, put them in the fridge. You can also leave them on the counter for about a week they'll be fine.Suzy Chase: Really?Melissa Clark: Whenever we make eggs in our house we boil them and we start with room temperature eggs so I always have about half a dozen eggs sitting out in a basket on my counter and we use those eggs for soft or hard boiled eggs. When my fridge is crammed I will keep a carton of eggs out and again, like I said, they will last for at least a week out of the fridge. Especially if you keep them in the carton. So don't worry. Don't freak out about eggs. Eggs are not like milk and butter. Even butter lasts a few days out of the fridge. I mean, we in America tend to get really nervous about perishability but in these moments when you're actually eating everything you're buying because you're cooking at home you're going to use this stuff up. So eggs and butter can be out of the fridge. Eggs for a week easily, butter for a few days. Milk unfortunately does have to go in your fridge unless you get shelf stable milk, which is another thing that we should stock up on if we drink milk and we like milk. Get some UTH shelf stable milk and that will keep in your pantry for a long time.Suzy Chase: You love a good sheet pan recipe. Could we do something with chickpeas on a sheet pan?Melissa Clark: I love a sheet pan recipe. I love chickpeas on a sheet pan. So roasted chickpeas are delicious, a great snack. Toss them with olive oil, salt and whatever spices you have around. I like to use garam masala but you can also just use cumin or a little bit of cayenne and there are different ways to do it. I like to do it in a hot, hot oven. I do 425 or 450 and when you start to see them sizzle, it takes like half an hour sometimes depending on how wet your chickpeas were, before you even do that take your chickpeas out of the can, dry them off with a kitchen towel and then coat them in oil and spices and salt and blast them in a hot oven. They're so crispy you can't stop eating them. I just love them. [inaudible 00:23:29] to that basic thing, if you've got a chicken, chicken parts or a whole chicken, throw it right on top. Just right on top of that sheet pan full of chickpeas and the chicken fat will season the chickpeas even more and make them even more crunchy and delicious. Chicken and chickpeas is one of my favorite sheet pan meals. I have a recipe for that in my dinner cookbook.Melissa Clark: Again, they can also be he bases for a vegetable dish. You can have chickpeas and you can put all kinds of veg for roasting along with them like sliced carrots and maybe cherry tomatoes if you have those little non-seasonal cherry tomatoes right now that I know that I have, just throw them on the sheet pan. They get so much better when they're roasted in spices along with some chickpeas. Potatoes are great there, too. There's a lot you can do. Just think of the chickpeas are the base and then you're going to add either a protein or more vegetables.Suzy Chase: In terms of fresh fruits and vegetables what are some varieties that keep for a while?Melissa Clark: Think about root vegetables and boiled vegetables. So aside from you know that you can keep onions and garlic and potatoes in the pantry for months, they keep for months, and sweet potatoes but then think of the ones that you might want to keep in the fridge like radishes keep for a month for sure, I've kept radishes in my fridge for a long time. Turnips, which turnips when they're fresh and juicy are delicious raw. I like to slice them into salads. Fennel is another thing that keeps for a long time, carrots of course, celery. Stock up on those things, keep them in your fridge and then if you can't get lettuce at least you can make a salad from all these juicy, crisp vegetables that you have lying around.Suzy Chase: So bars are closed in New York City. No more happy hour for us. Do you have a delicious quarantine cocktail idea?Melissa Clark: Yeah we're big Campari drinkers so we've been making Negronis that and Boulevardiers and the thing about a Negroni and a Boulevardier is it's the same drink with a different booze sort of as the center of it and it's such an easy drink. I don't really mix cocktails very well because I'm a little bit sloppy, I'm not precise. My husband bakes the bread and he mixes the cocktails and he does both of them much better than I do. I can make a Negroni or a Boulevardier. This is how you do it. It's equal parts which is so great because equal parts, right? That means for me I can eyeball it. I just put it all into my little rocks glass, equal parts Campari and then for a Negroni it's gin and for a Boulevardier it's whisky, like usually we use rye whisky but you can use bourbon, then sweet vermouth. Then you just take some orange zest and squeeze the oils into it. You do a twist, is the cocktail word for it, see I'm bad with cocktails, and some ice cubes and that is it. It is the perfect drink that even I can make.Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called "My Favorite Cookbook." Aside from this cookbook what is your all-time favorite cookbook and why? And I can't wait to hear this.Melissa Clark: Okay so I can't name a favorite because I can't have a favorite child even though I do have a favorite child because I only have one child but if I had two children I couldn't name a favorite. I can't name a favorite cookbook but the one I'm reading right now, I'm reading a lot of Jane Grigson and Jane Grigson is a British author who wrote a lot of cookbooks back in the 60s and 70s and 80s. She's fabulous. Her stuff is fresh, seasonal food that is really simple in it's essence but that she shows you how to make your own. She shows you how to adapt it and I love all food writing that is adaptable and open hearted in that way. I love people who teach you how to make things delicious in the way that you like them and Jane Grigson absolutely does. Any of her cookbooks, she has a book called "English Food" which I love but any of her books are great.Suzy Chase: Well that's what you do for us.Melissa Clark: I try. I try, darn it.Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?Melissa Clark: I am Instagramming like a fiend these days because I'm trying to share recipe ideas for people who are cooped up. So find me on Instagram primarily at Clarkbar. So Clarkbar like the candy, which is not good branding because on Twitter I am Melissa Clark.Suzy Chase: James Beard said, "Food unites us. It brings us together." Thank you for all that you do to bring us together and thanks for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.Melissa Clark: Thanks for having me, Suzy.Outro: Subscribe over on CookerybytheBook.com and thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book.

Do you find yourself talking to the same people about bourbon every day and realize you talk to them more than your best friends? In fact, maybe they are your new best friends. We're all in that situation now and that's what today's episode is all about. Bourbon has a magical element that seems to bring people together across every demographic to share a common bond. Perhaps you're getting started and want to figure out, how do you find your bourbon people? We sit down with Jeremy Mandel, he's an admin and founder of a few online communities and one of our Patreon supporters. We go through what it takes to find connections with other like minded individuals that can be done online with people around the world or perhaps in your own backyard with meet-up groups, bourbon societies, and much more. You'll come away at the end of this realizing you probably followed some of these same steps without realizing it. Show Partners: The University of Louisville has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/bourbonpursuit. At Barrell Craft Spirits, they spend weeks choosing barrels to create a new batch. Joe and Tripp meticulously sample every barrel to make sure the blend is absolutely perfect. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about money. How did you get into bourbon? What was your introduction to the online bourbon communities? Do you ever have events with your bourbon friends? Do certain groups create more bonds than others? What about your local society? Do you think raffle groups encourage camaraderie? What did you think of the Bob Dylan whiskey? Would you rather go to someone's house to drink bourbon or a bar? Can these bourbon networks get bigger? How can people find a bourbon community? What relationships have gotten you a really good bottle of bourbon?   0:00 Are you interested in pairing your expertise on the distilling process with key business knowledge such as finance, marketing and operations, then you need to check out the distilled spirits business certificate from the University of Louisville. It's an online program that can be completed in as little as six courses. The program is taught by both UVL business faculty and corporate fellows. So you are getting real experience from experts at the most renowned distilleries, companies and startups in the distilling industry. We're talking leaders from Brown Forman beam Suntory, jack daniels and more. get enrolled to this online program at U of l.me. Slash bourbon pursuit. 0:39 My dad's famous line is nothing I said is on Episode One is if you're if you're drinking beer, you're watching the party. If you're drinking bourbon, you are the party 1:01 This is Episode 243 of bourbon pursuit. I'm Kenny, one of your hosts. And how about some pursuit series news. Now, we don't want to use this as a self serving platform. But lots of people want updates on what's happening. So here's the latest. Last week, Ryan and I visit our barrel broker where we get to do what's sort of unusual in the bulk source market, where we get to actually hand select every barrel. Now, we've talked about this before, and you're going to hear about it more, but this time we tasted through 22 barrels and wound up choosing three barrels of 10 year Tennessee bourbon, and then we also selected two barrels of a special ride. We've got a few months until the Ryobi bottled, but this stuff blew our minds at only four years old, because it had such fruity and bubblegum flavors that I think it's gonna take everybody by surprise. We've also purchased four more barrels from Finger Lakes distilling, and we'll be releasing more of those relatively soon. We've got other things in the works as well. And you can get all those updates for upcoming barrels in our Patreon community. 2:00 Lastly, we have finally touched down in Georgia and more specifically in Atlanta, where there are select retailers with limited amounts of Episode 21 and it tastes just like candied pecans. Next week we have two more barrels going up for sale to our Patreon community first before they are released to the general public. And one of these barrels is our first ever 15 year old bourbon release. It might just be one of my favorites because you know, I love that oak. Alright, let's get on with the industry news. Right now Corona virus is on everyone's radar and we all know the travel industry is hurting because events held worldwide are being canceled. But what does that mean for the spirits industry? Chinese consumers are really tailored more to scotch and cognac and buys you where it's going to be hit hardest. biagio has already cut its full year 2020 profit forecast by up to 260 million as bars and restaurants and Greater China remain empty. beams and Tory said that the coronavirus situation is 3:00 Creating challenges in key Asian markets and its 2019 full year results. For no record anticipates the outbreak will have a severe impact on its China and travel retail business and cut its guidance for organic growth in profit from reoccurring operations for fiscal 2022, two to 4% from its previous expectations of five to 7%. In response to the industry demand for greater clarity during global threats, I Ws our drinks market analysis, which is the leading authority on data and intelligence on the global beverage alcohol market has revealed plans to launch the AWS our Corona virus risk assessment model, also known as cram. The tool will quantify and forecast the impact of key global events, giving industry leaders data driven insights and situational forecasts to navigate the situation and manage risks. To commemorate the celebration of its hundred and 50th anniversary pulled forcers opening the first ever whiskey row retreat. It's going to be a huge 4:00 immersive bourbon apartment experience. one lucky winner and a guests will be invited to stay at whiskey row retreat during National bourbon day on June 14, and the entire guest experience at the whiskey row retreat will center around unprecedented access to the production of the bourbon, the brand and the people behind old forester. The contest winner and a guest will be invited to partake in special activities at the old forcer distilling company, including experiencing the process of creating a barrel. Joining Jackie's I can in a single barrel selection and custom cocktail classes, such as learning how to make the brain signature perfect old fashioned to enter the whiskey row retreat contest fans 21 and older can enter by sharing an essay on why they think they should be chosen to win and stay at the whiskey row retreat. And you can do this by visiting old forester.com slash whiskey row retreat. The entry for deadline is April 20 of 2024 roses small batch select is expanding beyond 5:00 2019 initial launch of only being in five states. new markets were small batch select will be available in the coming months include Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. 5:18 independent state company and the Boswell family who you might remember Brad Boswell the CEO back on episode 185 are giving $1 million to the university Kentucky to further spirits research at the James been Institute for Kentucky spirits. The gift will fund a new maturation facility that will allow the dean Institute to experiment with barrel aging spirits produced in its research distillery, the only one of its kind in the United States. This new warehouse will have a 600 barrel capacity and become an interactive classroom and laboratory where students and scientists can tackle real life industry issues. Do you find yourself talking to the same people every day about bourbon and real life? 6:00 You talked to them more than maybe some of your best friends from school. think we're all in that same situation now. And that's what today's episode is all about. bourbon has a magical element to it that seems to bring people together across every demographic and share a common bond. But perhaps you're getting started and you want to figure out how do you find your bourbon people. We sit down with Jeremy Mendell, he's an admin and founder of a few Facebook communities. And he's also one of our Patreon supporters. We go through what it takes to find connections with other like minded individuals that can be done either online with people around the world, or perhaps it's in your own backyard with meetup groups, urban societies, and much more. You'll come away at the end of this realizing you've probably followed some of these same steps already without even realizing it. And hey, if you want to be a part of another community, join us on Patreon where you're 700 plus members strong and growing every single week. As a final reminder, we are doing our 2020 bourbon pursuit audience survey and we want to know more 7:00 More about you, our listeners. So if you've got 30 seconds to spare and I promise it's only 30 seconds, please visit bourbon pursuit calm slash 2020 survey. Alright, it's time for the show. Here's Joe from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred minich with above the char. 7:18 It's Joe from barrel bourbon, myself and our master distiller a triple stimpson spend weeks choosing barrels to create a new batch. We meticulously sample every barrel and make sure the blend is absolutely perfect. Next time ask your bartender for barrel bourbon. 7:33 I'm Fred MiniK. And this is above the char money. Oh, we talked about it. It's the root of all evil. And we wish we had more of it and people tell themselves that money can't buy you happiness. Well, you know, money is very, very, very important. And right now you have distillers from Washington to Florida and from Texas to South Dakota. 8:00 All scrambling going to banks, venture capitalists, private investors, Angel share people, friends, family. Hell, you might even just randomly run into someone on the airport, you're hitting them up for money. There are so many people looking for money in this space. And people just don't understand whiskey. I sometimes wonder what the world would look like in the distilling business. If mainstream businesses understood what this world encompassed, that in fact that bourbon is its own audience. bourbon is as big as a sports team or NFL franchise or even a sports league. It's bigger than a lot of TV shows. And if people would actually just kind of wake up and look past the alcohol aspect. We may be hearing about brands that you never even knew about, but because somebody can't get the money 9:00 That they need to start the distillery of their dreams. We're not going to hear about them. 9:06 And there are people like Cedar Ridge and Iowa where the farmer, the winemaker, he leverages his house, everything that he owns his land. I mean, I think he might even leveraged a kid near to just to start the brand Cedar Ridge. He kept believing in it, he kept believing in it, and he kept believing it and then finally he got a big big break. And that is just it. Everybody needs a break in this business. But it all starts with the money. And I'll be damned if there's just not enough of it to go around. 9:43 And that's this week's above the char. Hey, did you know that I have got a new podcast. It's in the music interview section. So help me become the number one music interview podcast on Apple. Go over there and search for my name the Fred MiniK show. 10:00 Then we'll have the number one bourbon podcast and the number one music interview podcast. Go check it out. Until next week, cheers. 10:11 Welcome back to the episode of bourbon pursuit, the official podcast of bourbon. Kinney, Ryan and Fred here talking about a fun cultural topic. You know, this is, this is something that even this podcast wouldn't have started if it wasn't for the type of pot or the topic that we are actually talking about tonight. And it's kind of really, I guess, you could say it's a way that you you branch out a little bit you end up growing, we've all had friends that we get through school and college or work or anything like that, and then you end up finding Oh, I can find brend friends and other things such as hobbies, and, and really, bourbon is one of those things that we talked about all the time. It's what brings people together. And that's kind of what brought this podcast together. I mean, Ryan was 11:00 Really on the idea of Hey, let's start a bourbon podcasts. And I think I know this guy named Kenny. Yeah, we weren't really friends. And so we were we were we were acquaintances at that point Really? Well, we, ironically enough, we both liked etn. Before, before bourbon, so that was the introduction. And then the bourbon kind of brought us together. But yes, bourbon has definitely like, I'm amazed at how many people and how vast my network has become just because of bourbon. And like, it's crazy. Like, it's just nuts. It's it's a cool, very cool thing, and very humbling thing. So yeah, I'm excited to talk about it. Because it's, I've been so blessed to meet so many fortunate people, Fred included. 11:42 Not just doing your yard. We're now friends. 11:46 I feel we were actually friends before that, too. Yep, exactly. So yeah. I feel good because we're rep Fred and I were you know, we're Facebook official friends. So I feel like I made it. Yeah. Good. Good to see everything that's happened in our person. 12:00 So wives and kind of grown since they're now and now we're going to the point where I think is there a day that goes by we all don't text each other. 12:09 I don't think there is actually. Yeah, so it's like it's like texts like part of our dinner as long frightened as text chain started like 6am Kenny challenges in about 10am 12:22 Yeah, you already get started way too early. I don't know how you do it. It's not my choice. Yeah, I got a five year old elbowing me in the back. Daddy Get up, gotta get out. 12:32 So our guests just chimed in there. So let's go ahead and introduce them and kind of really start talking about the meat of this subject. So tonight we're joined by Jeremy Mendell, Jeremy is a member of our Patreon community and came to us with this topic. So Jeremy, welcome to the show. Thank you guys. been listening to you forever. Really happy to be here. Hopefully we're making a dream come true. Tonight. We're on bourbon pursuit. Thanks for putting up with us all these years. For I can't even tell you how long 12:59 Yeah, 13:00 dum dum meet your idols 13:02 Yeah, it's terrible and you were laying 13:05 So Jeremy let's hear your kind of coming to age tale of bourbon. How did how did you really get into it was their first sipar some sort of introduction rolling up 13:17 I had a you know like I would imagine a lot of people do just in high school. I guess I shouldn't say that but I'm pretty sure it's common we've amassed even master distillers say they started yet but we had a little poker room with some friends and there was we would always try and get a bottle of something for our games and 13:38 we found because then it truly was finding we were fine. We found a bottle with a nice little horse on the top and it was around little ball and 13:48 my goodness it was delicious. 13:51 So that was back when you let go into a store and buy some blends. 13:56 But that kind of kicked it off went through college. 14:00 Then, 14:01 probably two, three years after graduating college and went to the University of Arizona 14:08 was talking to a buddy of mine, Tori Levy, who was in my fantasy football league. He beat beat all of us. And when I sent him the money, he sent me a picture of him cracking a Pappy 15 and I had read about that, but I'd never had it or even knew anyone that could get it. So I said, How the heck did you get that thing? 14:33 And then he showed me oh my goodness, there is bourbon on the internet. 14:39 So it was just kind of a spiral from there. 14:43 But you know, from there, you meet a whole bunch of people, which I'm sure we're going to talk about, kind of create a little bourbon community and that's kind of how this whole series of cardboard boxes behind me came to be. Yeah, we're about to say that that kind of justifies your your level of music 15:00 But to this I think I think all of us have a room in the house or a closet of something that just has boxes of herbaceous ages cardboard boxes stacked with inside each other commitment so much as it's a level of cheapness. 15:17 I certainly don't want to pay $4 for a box. So my goodness. Yeah, yeah. Every time I get an Amazon package, I'm like, is this gonna be good for future use to ship something? Well, it gets it gets the point now where you can train your significant other when they understand what the right size boxes and they'll be like, honey, I save this for you. Yeah, my wife said, you know, this is the perfect box to get some of those little stupid bottles that you do with the stupid bottles. The two ounce the two ounce stamp. Gotcha. Yeah, little bit. It's perfect for your little stupid bottles. 15:54 She's supportive of the hobby. That's great. I'm supportive in that this is existing, but she 16:00 Certainly gives me crap all the time. Oh, yeah. Well, is it isn't that her job though? To give you a little shit? I think so. Yeah. Just join the club at that point. So you're fine. 16:11 So I guess let's go ahead and kind of talk about, you know, we can each share some of these stories of how we got introduced to it. And Fred, I don't know if we've ever heard your story, like kind of how were, you know, did did somebody introduce you to bourbon and sort of how did that that process? Yeah, I've man I was drinking bourbon. And 16:36 you know, I didn't actually drink in high school like that. So I was not, you know, the only times that I had drank in high school definitely was wasn't bourbon. He was smoking when I 16:48 was doing hard drugs. He's doing those Double Dragon drinks. 16:52 So when I went to college, I became a big, you know, beam drinker. And you 17:00 My first legal drink was you know, Jim being white and I remember going into the liquor store at that time and there there was like old Fitzgerald and well I mean think I've all I've thought about this a lot I wish I could travel back in time to Stillwater Oklahoma when I was you know just turning 21 which would have been 2000 and and just like clean those shelves out because they were loaded loaded with stuff that now I would you know, have spent four or 500 to 1200 dollars on so it's 17:34 I definitely was not drinking well, but when I when I was drinking 17:38 bourbon it was always Jim Beam white label if I was like, you know, wanting to you know, live high on the hog and getting Maker's Mark, but, but who's who's the person introduced you like you did? Did you actually just go into the store and say like, I think I feel like drinking or you ever been to a fraternity party? I have. Yeah. So who gave me the bottle 18:00 I don't know. 18:02 You know, I will say probably the moment that I fell in love with it, it was it was probably on a fraternity bus on our way to New Orleans from Baton Rouge. We were there for like some kind of convention. Man, it just it just felt it was very tasty. I love the taste of it. And then I found myself like ordering jack or Jim 18:30 instead of beer, or sometimes both. And you know at that at that young age, and then when I was when I was in Iraq, I you know, we couldn't 18:42 you know, was against the our general orders to, to have, 18:47 you know, to have liquor or have anything, so I would have friends, you know, pour out Listerine bottles and fill it with Jim Beam or jack daniels at the time and 19:00 Those are your stupid bottles. Yeah. 19:03 If you were if you were, if you compare like a traditional bottle of Listerine next to like beam or jack, they had the same color. So the MPs couldn't, couldn't crack it open, you know, because they couldn't, you know, they wouldn't necessarily, you know, think to look at that but so that's how I used to do it. And I actually did have there was a unit 19:27 that would go into like northern Iraq in our bill and they would buy cases of liquor and occasionally like the South African contingent that was there, they would break it out. So like bourbon is, in my adult life. bourbon has always played a role in terms of like, where I really fell in love with it. Be honest with you is with my wife, you know, because she's, she's a big bourbon drinker, like you know, and I started, you know, I was just drinking it was I appreciating it prior to her 20:00 Probably not. But I don't think I appreciated many things until my wife. No. I want to make sure she gets that sound bite. What about you, Ryan? We're I think we talked I think this is actually episode one right episode. One of verbiage suit is where we talked about ours, but let's go ahead and rehash yours. Yeah, so thinking back down memory lane. It was in Bardstown As you may or may not know where I'm from, but no. Yeah, definitely for that, man. That's all I know. You get like bourbon. royalty DNA in your blood. Yes, analog connections. Yes. Throughout. But now the first time it was like at a field party and my buddy, his name's Pikey. I know weird name. But uh, he had Evan Williams and coke. 20:50 And I was like, let me try that it was first time I kind of return I was like, all this tastes like sweet nectar. Like this is this is amazing. And then from there, yeah, just 21:00 drank so much Jim Beam white label in college. Oh my god, I can't even drink it now. Like, I can't even look at it, because it brings back so many bad memories, but good memories, but uh, I didn't really like start getting serious till I don't know, after college. I mean, my dad does a lot of work for the bourbon industry. He's a machinist. So he does tool and our pair and I would deliver parts to him or for him to the different distilleries. And I remember you know, just seeing the bottles they would always give them stuff and then I would take it to 21:35 and so I vividly remember taking like some alijah correct 20 ones and Noah Mills 15th and taking them to college parties and like, totally mixing them with coke or ginger ale and like, just had no clue what you know what I had, and so, yeah, just kind of progressed from there and then like, really start appreciating when I went I went to school at Rutgers and New Jersey. Kind of 22:00 Nobody there really knew it. So I kind of preached the gospel of there and kind of started really diving into it. 22:09 And then I met Kenny and then found out there's this whole world of collecting and trading and flipping and collecting, you know, all this stuff and then so you go down that rabbit hole and then I'm like, why don't we? I can't just like have the hobby I gotta start a business about it. You 22:25 can't just leisurely enjoy bourbon with friends. So like, let's start a podcast but yeah, it's, it's and now you know, I I'm no one's a stranger to me. And so like, I've just reached out to anybody that has the same interested in me. I'm not afraid to talk to them and reach out to them. So 22:45 I've met so many people that enjoy bourbon and it's been like, crazy and it's cool because I'm from there. And when I grew up, no one gave a shit about it. And now everybody gives a shit about it. And you know, just seeing the towel. 23:00 flourish and stuff it's pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely we'll touch more on like meeting new people and stuff with instead of bourbon all kind of recap mine I know I've probably said it before. I have the same sort of coming of age tale is Fred over there. So I joined a fraternity and university Kentucky's campus. And I mean, I remember back it was $10 for a 24 pack of Natty light and being an undergrad. Yeah, you always just get you have 10 bucks you give it to one of the juniors or seniors within the fraternity they'd run out you come back and like that's your that's your that's your drinking for the evening. However, I remember hanging out with some of the older upperclassmen in there, they were all sitting around drinking bourbon and coke and back then, our drink of choice was Kentucky tavern. That was that was our go to. And that was kind of like my first introduction that they were actually known as an attorney was actually known as one of the biggest bourbon drinking fraternities on campus. I don't know if that was a good thing or bad thing at the time. 24:00 Time, but because everybody knows what happens if you get a little too bourbon drunk when you're a little young and stupid, but back then it was, it was a it was a way to kind of get an introduction to it. So of course mixing the bourbon and coke. However, at the time, you know, this was also a time when you're drinking, not to sit there and enjoy your drinking to consume and have a good time. And, you know, all that aside, you don't feel as bloated when you have a few bourbon and cokes after you do try to have like eight to 10 eight to 1012 beers so it actually made you feel a little bit better going throughout the night. And now you're interrupting my dad's famous line is and I think I said this on Episode One is if you're if you're drinking beer, you're watching the party. If you're drinking bourbon You are the party. 24:50 So I've always loved that line. But anyways, so let's go on to the next t shirt. Yeah. 24:56 But yeah, I mean that's that's sort of how it started for me And ever since I did that. 25:00 Like I was always one person that was kind of like preaching like always do bourbon and cokes. During college, it just seemed like the easiest way to do it. And not only that is me and my roommate at the time we became social chairs. Social chair is a nice word to say party planner for back in college in the fraternity days. And so our biggest Actually, this is what I truly miss about college is that your biggest worry is where we're going to party on Thursday and Friday night. And that's that's what you had to set up. And so back then UK was a very dry campus and you couldn't have any alcohol with inside the fraternity houses at all. So our goal was to say how do we have house parties and still serve liquor? And so what we did is we get we got those massive Gatorade jugs that you see on the sidelines of football stadiums, and we filled those and it was one handle a Kentucky Tavern two to two liters of diet coke and so 26:00 Everybody drink bourbon and coke at the parties. And that's how we we continued that to flourish for a while, but after after college then is kind of when the appreciation started. I didn't stop drinking bourbon, it was still bourbon and cokes and that's where the progression starts where you start getting rid of the coke, you start getting rid of the ice and you start learning to drink it neat. Old forester became a staple for me. Every once in a while splurging on small batch. You know, Fred, you talked about going back to the store and, and thinking of all those bottles that you could have had my God even I went to the liquor store and when I was there buying for parties, I would buy, probably, gosh 10 cases of six or 1.75 liters of Kentucky Tavern every single week. I don't think I even looked at any other bottles on the shelves. I always looked at figure out where could I get the cheapest premiere like it's overpriced. 26:57 I mean, that was didn't really know any better at the time. 27:00 And be honest even when I even after college, I didn't really know any better either. I was drinking for as a small batch I didn't know limited limited editions even existed until I was working at a company and I there's a guy that worked there and we talked about bourbon all the time. You know, we we'd sit there and talk about bottles we come together and and he's the one introduced me to limited editions. And this was 2012, late, early 2013 timeframe, something like that. And he's like, Hey, I got a few extra things. I'll just sell them to you at cost because I'm just overflowing and and so he sold me a four roses hundred and 25th anniversary, an old rip squat bottle. 27:42 Jefferson's I think it was 21 maybe it was and they were all at retail at the time. I was just like, Oh gosh, like 27:54 80 bucks a bottle like you sure about this. And, and so that's that's kind of what got me on to that. 28:00 Train. And then of course, as as Jeremy said, you find out about online forums and then the whole world of different things start opening up to you if things that you never even knew existed. Yeah, and that's, I think that's really where the rabbit hole starts for most of us. And I think that's kind of where the conversation keeps going for a lot of us here because the online community is really where a lot of the relationships are built. It's also where a lot of relationships go to die and 28:30 let's be honest, there's a lot of butthurt that happens out there. 28:34 So feelings journals for the bourbon world, what are you talking about? Yeah, right. You mentioned one thing and then all of a sudden you get people either hating on your loving Yes. So Jeremy kind of talk about your introduction into like the the bourbon online communities. So my buddy Tory said, hey, yeah, I got this happy 15 years I finally found a good use for Facebook. So I 29:00 got invited to one of those deals. saw that, you know, my first love bourbon was was Blanton's. And I got on there and within five minutes 29:10 I saw somebody was selling a blends. It was dated in like 1988. And I didn't realize that whiskey existed before I drank it. 29:22 So bought that 1988 Blanton's and still have about a quarter of it. 29:28 And really from there, it's sort of just went into a networking you can almost fall into this accidentally and I'm sure that you all his experiences are very similar. 29:38 But you know, you find some people that you've got good relationships with. And now I'm a part of a few groups that I really proud to be a part of, and it's been really cool. And you know, I've got a network, really across the country coast to coast and actually even out of the country, just from those stupid Facebook groups. Can you enlighten me 30:00 Major towns if you needed to sleep on someone's couch, he would do bourbon. I'm going to Florida for business on Friday and I am crashing in the spare bedroom of a bourbon friend that night. No way. It's awesome. We're going to be drinking. Well, have you met him before in person? Yes, a couple times. Actually, he and I have not picked a barrel together. But we got to take part and what to me is my favorite part about a lot of this stuff is the charity component. 30:30 And there was a guy in Florida who 30:34 had a really terrible cancer diagnosis and young guy about 21 years old 22 maybe. And without getting super deep in the details of it. I went down there last year because we raised him about 17 18,000 bucks. And I went down there to 30:54 to go with him to present the money to him and his family. And that was the first time that I cracked 31:00 His little No I didn't crash his place but we met that time. 31:03 Like here's a here's a check by the way Can I stay in your spare bedroom 31:11 This is actually the first time crashing his house but we have met before but that's that's always a lot of fun and of course you know my wife thinks it's ridiculous but you know we're in this city I gotta go see this guy. 31:25 So, but yeah, you get you get this network and I'm sure you guys are all the same in that regard you got kind of people all over the country that you know from random, you know, this guy helped me find this thing I was looking for. And of course, my my wife would say well, why are you looking for that in the first place? You have 200 something 300 31:47 but this sounds all too familiar. 31:50 Never heard that before, right? Yeah, but But yeah, it's you know, you form these communities. We've we've been able to do a lot of good. 31:59 We've been 32:00 able to do a lot of bad too but but it's a lot of fun and it's this whole kind of separate world that you get to be a part of all around this brown water stuff that we all like to bring 32:13 up good. I was gonna ask you know like you talked about like meeting up like with it with individuals but do you ever like, like throw get togethers where your your buddies that you've met online or whatever you guys go to a house or you go to a bar Do you all have like special events or anything like that? So nothing that's terribly scheduled but 32:36 one of the bourbon groups I'm in is called karma. And we did the first one was, it's kind of always centered around barrel pics. So about a summer of 2017 we all got together did a four roses pick and not Creek pick a couple other things that I'm not remembering right now. But you know, there was a good 3035 of us they got together. Remember, we all 33:00 Went to Haymarket one night and that was a blast. And it's all these people who I recognize from one single picture. 33:08 But it was really cool. So we we've done that a couple of buddies. We Ribeiro, the whole bunch of Nashville number one, I think it was from Buffalo Trace and we threw it up in a barrel at a buddy's farm in Tennessee. And we all got together about two months ago, to see if it sucked. 33:31 And fortunately, it didn't suck. 33:35 So we had a weekend at an Airbnb on a on a river or lake or somebody of water. And it's a it's a great time and so and those people end up becoming some of your best friends. It was really, really bizarre but actually ends up happening that way. Every time I go meet my bourbon or internet friends, my wife's like, what are you doing going to meet your internet friends, you're going to be on dateline one of these times. 34:00 The barrel pick that I went to my wife was convinced I was going to be raped and murdered. She was. 34:07 Yeah. 34:09 Oh, gosh, I think we all get that, that every once in a while I think my wife is getting a little bit more tuned to it. Because of course, you know, through our community through Patreon, we get emails all the time, and we try to make it when we can have people saying, you know, we'd love to just come and meet up for a drink and, and sometimes we can make it happen and, and, and she's always kind of like, Alright, well just make sure you text me at the table in case you need. 34:33 Yeah, I remember one time I was going to meet with Kenny and doubled Patreon guys and I got the Uber and to me, it's like, text me as soon as you get there and like make sure as soon as you leave text me and I'm like, Okay, I'm promise I'm gonna make it home. They're not going to kill me. Or a tag team. We can we can take anybody. Yeah. But back to cut it. Go. Go ahead, Jeremy. I'll see you say you guys looked up so you could take them now. Yeah, Kenny's not. 34:59 Well, 35:01 I haven't worked out in a while you gotta he doesn't wire your wire sorry. Yeah, I am. So let's kind of back to the you know the community aspect of this. You know, you had mentioned karma. I mean, are you are you in in with other groups and stuff like that where you kind of find those ends? And I guess are there are there certain types of groups that create more bonds than others? 35:29 What do you get if you mix Seattle craft, Texas heritage and Scottish know how that's to bar spirits to our spirits traces its roots to a ranch in rural Texas run by the founder, Nathan Kaiser his family for six generations. Nathan grew up on the ranch was stories of relatives bootlegging moonshine, and after moving into Seattle, he wanted to keep the family tradition alive and he opened to bar spirits in 2012. They're very traditional distillery making everything from scratch and each day starts by milling 1000 pounds of grain their entire plant 36:00 product lineup consists of only two whiskeys, their moonshine and the only bourbon made in Seattle. Both bottles are being featured in rack house whiskey clubs next box. rack house whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club, and they're on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer rock house ships out to have the feature distilleries finest bottles, along with some cool merchandise in a box delivered to your door every two months. Go to rack house whiskey club.com to check it out and try some to bar for yourself. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 36:37 What's up everyone? i'm john Henderson, your admin over at the bourbon pursuit Discord server. As a coordinator for the Christmas fundraisers held by the bourbon pursuit. I'd like to thank everyone who contributed. I couldn't be more proud of this community. One perk of joining the bourbon pursuit on Patreon is that you get access to real time chat with other members along with Kenny Ryan and Fred through discord from photo sharing and sample swaps to 37:00 events where ultra limited releases like willet bottles are exchange. There's always something going on. Right now over 300 members of the Patreon community have joined and are connecting over our passion for bourbon. If you're not on Patreon, now's a great time to join us and get involved with the community in a whole new way. Come check it out for yourself and be part of the behind the scenes chat photos and video calls. We'd like to have you join us on a live virtual board where we all discuss a pursuit series release just 37:28 are there certain types of groups that create more bonds than others? So community wise, I'm a part of two groups that really are my bourbon community, I would say. One is karma. That was a cost plus shit group which I'm sure we'll talk about what that is. 37:47 But essentially, it's, you know, I because of that I feel comfortable that if there's ever anything I want to try from some what's a good example? I'm up 38:00 Four roses, that four roses my top of the line, particularly the Oh, so recipe, and liquor barn had a Oh yeah, so barrel a month ago or so 38:13 I got two bottles over there. But I'm down in Texas and that's because of the connections I've made my cost call ship group karma. 38:21 That's been a great deal you meet all kinds of great people. 38:27 Then I'm also a part of a barrel picking group called 21 kings. And I've made a bunch of great connections there. I'm going actually I'm going to be up in Kentucky a couple weeks to pick a four roses barrel and willet ride barrel. And that's really it started more as a we want to be able to pick barrels and not share it among 200 people kind of thing. But you know, you make these connections with you. There's, it's really interesting. There's not a lot that I've experienced in the world that Bond's people together like picking a barrel of bourbon. Just 39:00 I don't know what the secret sauce in there I know what the sauces but 39:05 the common denominator. Yeah. 39:09 You pick a barrel of somebody, your pals, 39:14 you know, talk talk the whole thing through it's a painstakingly excellent process if you do it right. And I've been really lucky to get to do it a few times and I'm really excited to get to do it again here in a couple weeks. But it's been a really cool experience, you know, you get to get really, really good bourbon or rye or whatever it is you're picking, and you get to, you know, make connections with people that you wouldn't do, at least for me, certainly I never would have made those connections otherwise. Now I'm totally with you. And I guess that that also kind of thinks about you know, really where does the relationship start and how does it build and it I have the same things with with two other buddies that really 40:00 We we knew each or we didn't really know each other and then we've kind of found each other through bourbon and then their their personal lives. You start knowing about their children you know about their vacations, you know about you know, where they're buying a how their IRAs. Yeah, everything getting 40:19 better. I mean that's that's kind of like how it kind of blips like that where you it's just a really kind of snowballs where you kind of have this common foundation. And then from there, you start talking to them more than you did. The people that you went to school with years ago. And and they become something because it seems like bourbon is like an everyday thing. It's constantly changing and the people that care about it are always in tune with it. Yeah, absolutely. The you know, 40:47 it's really nice. You know, aside from just the personal connections, it's just great to have a network of fellow dorks that we can talk about that stuff with. 40:55 You know, there's I live in San Antonio, which is 41:00 You know, it's got a good bourbon community here, but it's sort of 41:04 from a maturity level. It really only became a big thing down here in the past three to six months. 41:12 So, you know, I always thought the Esquire bar had a really nice bourbon. So I guess choir is fantastic. And you know, they do the San Antonio cocktail conference down here. Yeah, I come every year was in the back of the room last time you did one. You can stay on this couch next time. Yeah, that's right. Do you mind? I mean, St. Anthony's expensive. Yeah, if you don't mind golden retriever sniffing around Yeah, you can always got a couch here. 41:40 But 41:42 there there's a few people here in there but like as compared to say like Houston with Houston's I mean, you guys know you guys had 41:51 the Houston bourbon society on a while back. That's been a big deal for a few years now. 41:57 So like, just as a 42:00 An example and I mean, no disrespect in saying this, but in the San Antonio group, the old Ezra seven year is a big damn deal right now. 42:09 And it's a good, it's an excellent drink. I really like it for what it is. But if you've been into the hobby really deeply for five plus years, then you know, you're you're drinking other stuff too. 42:24 So it's locally it's not as far down the line as say like a Houston or obviously anywhere in Kentucky, 42:33 which made the online community is a really great thing for us. And I guess another question with that is, are you seeing a lot of I mean, so you have your local society, and that's another place where a lot of people can go in and find some of those those bourbon connection those bourbon friends that live they live in your local area. Most of the time, you might find it on, you know, the the local page or the San Antonio page and then you see each other and me 43:00 And then all of a sudden things can happen through there. Yeah, the it's funny I'm hosting. And you know, Ryan, you joked about IRAs but that's 43:10 that's what I do for a living and I can't tell you how many times one of my bourbon friends would send me a text message or an emails like hey, do you mind if I ask you about this thing? So actually do know about a lot about the IRAs of some of my bourbon friends 43:23 have ESP gift but yeah, you end up I just right before we got on here, my buddy Josh Hayes gave me a call I talked to him for about a half hour and bourbon didn't come up. 43:40 So yeah, it's it's really cool to have connections like that. 43:44 You know, another thing that we kind of talked about earlier, too is and we'll kind of keep this train going with the kind of online community theme is we talked about raffles and and how these these kind of groups that are based off raffles, it also kind of creates a little bit of camaraderie. 44:00 Because you've got people that either they all try to play the same number and they fight each other for they get to know each other through there, or there's somebody that consistently win somebody else's raffle all the time. And so you have you have this also built into even though it's an expensive hobby, but it's something Yeah, we like in, in karma, my cost ship group the stupidest thing in the world, but when when mega ball went from 15 numbers to 17 or 19, or whatever the number is not 15 anymore. We were all very upset because that diluted our chances of winning stuff. 44:39 So we had to create our own weekly drawing, which is I got a bingo machine back there some somewhere did our own damn drawing because we didn't want to split a bottle 17 ways I want to split it 15 ways. 44:54 But yeah, you end up particularly in some of those secondary raffle sites you can lose just 45:00 an absurd amount of money if you don't really check yourself. Yeah, hey, Kenny for introducing me to raffles and risky whiskey in particular. Yeah, well, after a while, you figure, you know, that's the reason I'm doing it. I had to delete social media during the week. Thanks a lot. 45:17 But after a while, you end up as we were talking earlier, you kind of put planned but, you know, back to the, the community aspect of this, you know, we look at it as as an opportunity as as well to branch out, you know, my myself gotten to know people through these communities. And, and, you know, Jeremy, as you mentioned, you'll travel you go somewhere, you know, I've got connections now and a lot of states and so you can you can travel somewhere and know that you can confide in somebody and you can hang out and have a good time. You don't have to go and meet up at a bar somewhere to go and, and hang out. And ultimately, I don't know about you all, I'd actually rather go to somebody's house and dig into their collection. 46:00 Try something unique and I would just rather meet up at a bar. Well, it's funny we, my buddy Craig Lyman was here probably six months ago and there's three guys here locally they're a part of the karma group that we're that we're all a part of. And 46:18 we went out to a bar at all meet up and about halfway through my trying that Bob Dylan whiskey. 46:26 We all that stuff. I hate to break off on that, but what did you think of the Bob Dylan whiskey? I wasn't a tremendous fan of Oh, it's gross in it. 46:37 Like it like it all. It was bros about it. So there is a Okay, so it's, it's it's decal, and they got like the bottom of the barrel of the decal barrels. Because it's just it's like metallic. You know, there's like there's like this crazy like weird metallic note in there. Yeah, there was something to it that I had not tasted in bourbon. 47:00 before and I don't mean that in a good way. 47:03 And it inspired us we were 47:07 you Fred, you mentioned the Esquire we were down the road from the Esquire so maybe that was our problem. 47:13 But we all 47:15 that that drink inspired me to tell her because the best bar in San Antonio for whiskey is at each of our individual houses. Can we please just go there? 47:24 So that's what we did a lot better than the Bob Dylan whiskey. Yeah, I'm sorry, I interrupted you, but I had to ask your opinion on it. No, I don't totally remember where I was going with that. But you're absolutely right. That's up stuck by you, Fred. I mean, Fred, if you if you had enough connections now when you go somewhere that you'd rather not go to a bar and you'd rather go to somebody's house and dive into a you know, well, or gold vein or William Lou Weller, some old dusty Kentucky Tavern or Evan Williams or something like that. I've had you know, I've had some weird expense. 48:00 SS 48:03 please do share it out. Yeah, I've had some weird ones. But I'm you know it, I'll say that I still like to see what's going on in the town five years ago, I was like, I don't want to go to a whiskey bar because I have everything and I don't want to spend that kind of money. And I'd rather just kind of go hang out and see something else. 48:26 Now, I'm kind of going back to the, I feel like these, these bars are working hard to, you know, promote my culture, what I love, and you know, I gotta throw them a bone, I gotta, I gotta go in there and pay my respect to what they're doing. So that's kind of how I think of it now is like, I don't think of it as like, you know, look at them and their prices is just what they are if they're price gouging, you know, be very vocal about that, but 49:00 Often to like I end up correcting spelling errors and menus. I mean, for God's sake, why can't people spell will it correctly? It's true. 49:10 But I feel like I have, I have a purpose. And I'm supposed I need to be visiting these great temples that are bastions to whiskey. And you know, if they invite me and I'm going to go on a show, you know, check it out, but indeed do I like going to someone's house and going down in the basement and seeing seeing the collection? I mean, that's like to me that just doesn't get better than that. Now, what's weird is when like, you know, I come in the house. 49:45 And then the guys wife's down there, and I'm like, oh, oh. 49:53 And did you like she's like, who's this guy in the ass guy? 49:57 Oh, man, just ignore 50:00 Weird. So I didn't sleep on their couch. 50:04 Like I'm gonna go till now. 50:07 Yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's, it's fun to look at this and look at the relationships that you do build over time. Because it does seem like a lot of these hopefully will stand the test of time you never really know. Because it I don't know, maybe this is another kind of question is, 50:27 you know, as bourbon becomes more prolific and becomes more scarce and it's even harder to find these things and, and really, I don't know how much bigger these networks that people are creating right now can actually get, 50:42 you know, can they get bigger or you feel like, you know what, I don't have any more room in my life for new friends. We're just going to kind of keep it where it's at. For me and we I don't know if we actually call the episode this but you said the term finding your bourbon people 51:00 For me, selfishly, I found my bourbon people. 51:04 My biggest group of people that I care about is about 150 people and that's about as big as it needs to be and we're all having 51:13 like, 51:15 I don't know when this is going to air but right now there's this whole bsm bourbon secondary market thing going on Facebook, we couldn't care less. And it's been incredibly entertaining for us because I know because I've established my community. There's not really anything that's going to come out that if I really want to try it, I can't try it. from a store pick that comes out to got a buddy with a bottle of Red Hook ride that I'm going to see if I can't finagle announce it Oh yeah, battle. If you can find your your community then these groups of 50 some thousand people really don't matter all that much. So I guess another question is is so you found your people we've already decided three's enough. We're not bringing on a fourth co host 52:00 So we've got our people but how do you what would you say is is a good way for people to start getting introduced and sort of like find their you know, find their because you say they're missing connections they're getting to the gangs of the bourbon community. To me every every good bourbon connection I've come into is because somebody was doing something nice for somebody else. 52:25 You know, whether it's you know, there's last year almost city liquor here had a fantastic Elijah Craig pick, bought a bunch of it and help some friends that otherwise wouldn't have been able to get it. 52:38 Get it and they became good friends and that favor is I've been on the receiving end of that favor, you know, from different places all over the country. 52:50 And great bourbon connections for me rarely come from trying to price gouge somebody on a whatever store pic of 53:00 The month it is. 53:02 But if you, you know, just be cool with people and treat everyone this is you know, I guess cliche but 53:11 treat people the way you'd want to be treated. 53:15 You'll end up knowing some really cool folks and that's what's in that's what's happened to me. And that's the advice that I typically give people on between karma and 21 Kings I really don't need to know anybody else. Be able to know you guys 53:28 can be your friend. 53:31 Give me your card. Jeremy. One of my favorite things is like I get you know, when when I travel I do often like just kind of connect with someone who's a listener or reader just like or, you know, follows me on Instagram. I really do try to make an effort when I'm out to like, go hang out with people. And my favorite thing to do is like learn about their jobs. You know, because I find that we have 54:01 in people's pleat people's beliefs, because what I have found is is that bourbon is not. It doesn't attract as one race or one occupation or one political or religious belief. I mean, it attracts everybody. And to me that is what's so beautiful about this category is that I could be in a room with a staunch democrat and a staunch republican and they absolutely hate each other politically. But they'll just sit there and talk about how beautiful a new riff barrel pick is. And I'll talk about that now. They have three they might get into some, some fighting but once they cross the threshold, but it's kind of like, you know, Henry Clay, you know, the great Kentucky statesman, he said he wants said that bourbon was used to lubricate the wheels of justice. 54:59 It's like this 55:00 Great like, door opener for conversation? Well, I think even if you have the three drinks if you have committed commit each other from a place of respect, I mean, one of my, one of my good friends that I've met Andrew Goodman is a very far left person I am not. 55:17 And he lives in New York City. I was there for a business meeting. We went to one of the bars there. He bought me some vintage 17 rye, or no finish 21 rye. 55:30 And we talked politics for a good hour. And we walked out of there not hating each other and it's magic how that happens nowadays, you practically can't do it. Yeah. What problems you solve? I want to know down can 55:46 we solve the problem of how to get more Oh, yeah, so four roses, but we really solve any, any national issues, although that's become a national issue. 55:56 For sure. But you know, it's it's a conduit for 56:00 A really good conversation to like that, that I never would have had otherwise. And we continue to have it frequently. And then when it gets to be too, 56:08 too much we both saying I, you know, we don't want to fight with each other. Let's agree. 56:13 So I had kind of talked about it earlier, you know, with with my connection, pretty much my my mentor taught me that these are what limited edition releases are and he was able to, like I said, he gave me it at cost. So just to make sure that I'm not dealing with a story like this. I want you all to kind of talk about what are what are those relationships that you formed, that you've gotten, like a really, really good bottle of bourbon out of it just because of fostering relationship like that. I've had a lot. I've had a lot of guests. 56:48 And 56:51 the gentleman, you know, the gentleman passed away unfortunately he was his name is Dale Hamilton. And he 57:00 He was like the last. He was the guy who like got cola approvals for states of Weller. And he was like the last, you know, last guy from United Stiller's, the you know, for, you know, before they close, that's a Weller. And so he has this, you know, he had an incredible collection. And I helped him figure out what some things were, what some bottles meant. And, you know, we just and he came to my legend series at the Kentucky Derby Museum and we just we just became friends. I would visit him at Christmas. You know, he would come and we'd have lunch, he'd play with my kid. And he gave me a 1935 bottle of Weller. 57:46 And that was like a green Green Label blend. And it was fantastic. And the first time I opened it, I cracked it open with Tom Colicchio. From 58:00 Top Chef has just that right after my Top Chef appearance. And I wanted to celebrate with them and so I cracked it open with them. So I had like two, two really cool friends. You know that that that bottle kind of connected me to, you know, coming out of the gate strong here. Yes. Right Ryan, I think you should follow that. Well, I've had some great connections and relationships with people like Bill Thomas was kind enough to invite me to his house and stayed the night crashes. We didn't crash his couch. We had a room but but just his collection like we were at his bar and he's like, Guys, let's just go to my house. It's so much better here. And he had a green, you know, Green Label or not green or green bottle Van Winkle raw one early ditions it's one of the best bottles I've ever had. Drew Cole's been grew up with him from Willits. I mean, he's, he's one of the kindest, generous people he shares a ton of stuff for me, but the one the person I remember the most is probably my 59:00 Brother in law 59:02 I won't name any names but he works at heaven Hill and 59:06 he likes bourbon but he knows how like obsessed I am with him and he always goes out of his way to give me like a Parkers or an old fits release that just came out like he always is just finding ways to give me something and I'll always cherish that so it's all it means a lot to me. That's that's a relationship by blood that's hardly fostered over birth. 59:31 But we grew up friends before you know, brother in law's we were friends before so but yeah, those those are the bottles that are that need the most to me. Absolutely. In my case, it was really about people knowing what my tastes are. And as I kind of grew up in the hobby and grew up in the community, I would have people that would know the things that I enjoy and would suggest that I try something and oftentimes the suggestion would come with a 1:00:00 two ounce bottle of it showing up at my doorstep. And that's how I figured out that I love national distillers products. 1:00:08 Some I was telling somebody kind of the things that I liked about certain things that were my favorites and then before I knew it, there was a bottle of 1960s old granddad bonded 1:00:18 that showed up at my doorstep and 1:00:21 I guess I should be upset with them because it's caused me to lose a whole lot of money after that. 1:00:27 It sounds like that sounds like Ryan Ryan went on a huge old granddad kick for a while. Oh, gosh, you know it for me any of that old nationalist killer stuff is really just killer. It kind of hits me right in whatever my sweet spot is, for whatever reason, I'm telling we're Barban friends now. Hey, 1:00:44 I got some stuff to send you. 1:00:47 But 1:00:48 that, for me is the big is one of the cooler parts of the community is, you know, people who know you and I know other people's tastes and if I see something for 1:01:00 example I got a buddy who was a big q lover at four roses, and I'm not. And anytime I see a really good q i know exactly who it's going to a CPA office in Indiana. 1:01:15 Because I just, I know that somebody that will appreciate it for more than I. That's where we go. Yeah, it really is. I mean, and I think that's a good way to kind of start wrapping this up because we, you know, we really hit on a lot of things of, really, how do we how do we find your bourbon people? Right? I mean, it all starts by a friend or somebody introduces you to bourbon. It's very rare that any of us just stumble it on our own or, or maybe maybe you do get turned on to it by social media or for the general Media TV or purposes and stuff like that. But for the majority of us, there's somebody that gives us that introduction, and I think that we have all been in 1:02:00 situation to, and I know anybody that's probably listening to this podcast, you know, you're, you're one of the you're one of the geeks out there, you're one of the people that truly hone in on this craft, and you really appreciate it. So odds are is that you're sharing the love of bourbon with somebody else. And so that's just how everything continues to flourish and grow. And then from there yet, then it becomes like, oh, add me on Facebook, we add you to a few groups. And then at that point, you you've just you're all in and as, as Jeremy had mentioned earlier, the boxes just start showing up on your front door and, and your PayPal account gets a little lower, but that's just how it works. 1:02:39 That's just how it works. So, gentlemen, and Jeremy, thank you so much for joining tonight. This is again, a fun topic. And you know, I'll go ahead and kind of let you kind of say what you're gonna say there. I don't think I was gonna say anything. 1:02:55 To Are you 1:02:58 looking at me 1:03:00 You 1:03:01 know, it's it's the rule of thumb is just, I mean, I guess it's the rule of thumb for more than just the bourbon community, but don't be an asshole. 1:03:10 Yep. So you know, if you if you just be a nice guy, it's amazing what kind of connections you're come up with. And 21 Kings is picking up a barrel of will it right here in a couple weeks, and I'm fortunate enough to be one of the people doing it. And I never would have gotten the chance to do anything like that. Had I not been able to be a part of these communities. And it's really cool. It's some of the coolest experiences I've gotten to have and really thankful for that. You know, I guess the other bad thing about being in these communities too, is I didn't realize for years, I could just drive down to willet and just go pick up bottles in the gift shop and 1:03:47 I could have been doing it. I could have been doing it all along. And I just I just didn't know. So 1:03:53 that's the that's the bad part of it. But it's, it's also a good thing because you add a lot more appreciation for what you do have so 1:04:00 Again, everybody, thank you so much for joining tonight. Jeremy, do you have any kind of social handles or anything like that where people can find out more about you? Anybody who wants to I guess I'm around on Facebook Jeremy Mendell Twitter at Jeremy Mendell, Instagram at Jeremy Mendell, if you want to talk to me for some strange reason I'm available. Never know, I know where to send. If I see I know he so I know who to call and all of your VSOs to me, and I'll figure out some way to repay you that you'll be happy about. Very interesting. Very interesting. I know you kind of want to just go pick a whole barrel of Oh, yes. Oh, now just get out of them. I actually did I like I'd have one. It was from my pics from the icons of whiskey when I picked those fucking which was at the 17 or 18. 1:04:53 Yeah, we had all the recipes. It was I think that was a 1:04:59 I think it was like a 1:05:01 11 year old Yeah, that was I think the 2017 one that was really good and it's incredibly dorky that I can just pull out of my head 1:05:13 so that was when I was with whisky magazine and yeah that we did that. And that was like the one of the only times you saw all the all the recipes and that was back when four roses. I think they brought out 40 barrels from for us to taste and guide you lucky forget for now. So it's the way the world now. Alright, let's go. Let's go ahead and we'll sign off. So again, Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on tonight. It was a pleasure talking to you. And seriously, thank you so much for bringing this topic up. Because it's it's fun to kind of, you know, really take a retrospective look into really kind of how we all got here and why many people are still actually listening to this podcast because they all have some sort of coming of age tale that's probably very very similar. So 1:06:00 Make sure you check out Jeremy and all those social handles, make sure you check out bourbon pursuit as well as spread MiniK on the Twitter, the Facebook and the Instagrams. And if you're like Jeremy, and you want to help support the show, he's part of our community, you can be part of our community as well. patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit. So thank you, everybody. That is a part of it. And thank you, everybody that joined into the chat and watch us live. Another perk of just being a part of the community is you can be a part of these things as they're happening and be able to just chat along with us. So with that, thank you, everybody, and talk to you all next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

We all have beliefs that we live by, but often we don't even recognize what they are. I'm going to teach you how to pay attention and recognize your thoughts. Then I'm going to teach you how to change the ones that are not serving you. Because guess what, your beliefs are just thoughts, and they are optional!

This episode is brought to you by Inogic. Check out their new Kanban visualization for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Learning is important. Joel has started a bi-weekly LinkedIn newsletter about learning--why it is important to be a life-long learner, choosing a learning goal, and tools to help learning. On the podcast we discuss our learning goals. Matthew Anderson has also been pursuing certification, and he talks about his strategies for learning and test-taking. Other topics in the episode: Smart pens: Neo Smart pen and Moleskine Pen +. https://www.amazon.com/smartpen-N2-Bluetooth-Digital-Smartphones/dp/B00ST8GT8W/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=Neo+smartpen&qid=1582039395&sr=8-4 Edge collections: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/08/20/collections-now-available-microsoft-edge-preview/ Microsoft certification poster that shows the intersection of all Microsoft certifications: http://aka.ms/TrainCertPoster Taking certification exams: how to read the questions and scenarios to optimizing finding the correct answers. Going to testing center vs. online proctored exams Show notes:   [00:00:23] And Matthew. How are you doing day, Joel?   [00:00:27] I am excellent. Welcome to 2020.   [00:00:29] A little bit late in a little bit. Yeah, yeah. But we've been so productive we haven't had time for a podcast.   [00:00:36] Exactly. it's prioritization. And I think we both had that silent agreement that we have some things we're focused on right now.   [00:00:44] Well, actually, last week on my My Analytics for the first time I hit 42 percent of time for focus.   [00:00:53] Oh, congrats on that. I feel like I've graduated to new level.   [00:01:00] Yeah, I can say I have that much focused time scheduled. I am not hitting it, but I am getting more and more people to respect that time that I've got out there. So it's a it's a process. We'll say that.   [00:01:17] Right. So I've been putting a focus for 2020 on learning, trying to get some certifications as well as learn some other other things. I find that, you know, sometimes you get a little stale and you need to update your skill set, especially working with technology. You can do anything with learning in 2020.   [00:01:37] Yeah, absolutely. So the most recent certification I earned is the Azure A.I. Engineer Associate Certification.   [00:01:47] That's the A.I. 100. It was the exam. The core exam behind that one.   [00:01:53] So is this like super deep data science stuff for what is it?   [00:01:58] So it is a collection of cognitive services, including language, understanding and prediction, translation, and getting into machine learning pipelines. And how do you actually build and structure those services together to be able to meet the need for some sort of end user use case?   [00:02:22] Cool. So what what made you decide on that one versus all the other many things you could study?   [00:02:31] Yeah, so I had a stretch goal for myself around kind of getting outside of the business applications kind of silo within our product cloud, the different solution areas, I wanted to do something in Azure and I looked toward what are those things that are that I talk about the concept of in the biz app platform a lot, but I'd like to be able to go deeper and, you know, chat with folks about what's going on behind the scenes, talk intelligently around what some of those capabilities are and what really comes up a ton. Is these things around cognitive services and kind of improving those experiences using prediction automation around that. So it seemed like a really good fit. And then with the advent of the A.I. Builder Capabilities and power platform and some of what we have inside of customer insights and being able to make predictions about this kind of super set of information about customers, it just seemed like a really appropriate place to put some of that learning effort into.   [00:03:43] Definitely a hot area there. So how much time did you allocate to preparing for it?   [00:03:53] Yeah, so I have had this on my radar for about the last four and a half, maybe five months. I've been trying to go through some of the Microsoft learn capabilities or rather the learning paths that they have around that just to get familiar. But I really got serious about it when I put the I put my money where my mouth was and I scheduled the certification exam two months out. So it was mid-December. I made the decision to schedule it out for middle of February or rather early February. And just kind of use that as a way to pressure myself and really ratchet up the prep and training work that I was doing. And labs. Yeah.   [00:04:41] So that's that's key, I think. And I've been I've been writing a series of Linked-In articles about learning, because my focus has been on that since last year. I got the sales and customer service and marketing Dynamics 365 certifications and he first power platform certification. I didn't have to study at all for those because I've been doing it so long that I could just walk in and pass, maybe with just a cursory review, but the one I haven't had is field service because I just don't have as much experience with field service. I've dealt with it and worked with it. But I've never I've never taken the certification test on it before. So that was sure that was my goal. And my goal with this is just to broaden my reach outside of the normal projects that I work with. So with (the field service exam), that was kind of the first one I really had to study. And like you, I set myself a pretty aggressive goal of actually scheduling the exam. You put some teeth behind it. I've got people that are on my team or my mentor and they set a goal that “I want to get certified in xyz,” and then they never do it because they don't have a date. You got to have a date.   [00:05:59] What was going through my head the night before the exam, I was just panicking and saying I don't know if I'm actually ready. I went in and I was one click away from canceling the exam that I had for the next day. I didn't. Partially because I don't want to pay twenty two bucks to cancel this within the window. It's like five business days or something like that. You know what? I've done this much. I've put in the effort and I go take it even if I don't feel 100 percent ready. And I came out on the other side feeling pretty glad that I didn't spend the money to defer on something or I was going to pass it anyway.   [00:06:50] Right. I think when you take the more of those exams you take, you kind of recognize patterns. Not that taking more exams makes you more likely to pass another one, but it could. I've developed my own approach to taking a certification exam that helps me be more sure that I'm getting closer is the right answer. Doesn't always give me the right answer, but it gets me closer. I read the question backwards because the questions generally are set up with a scenario and a question. So the question is last and sometimes the scenario gives you extra details that you don't really need. So if you read the question, read it backwards. Read the bottom section to get the questioner and then look for the details in the scenario. You can be a lot more focused and avoid having the extra details throw you off. And then look at the scenario and then I look at the answers. And if it's not if I'm not really, really, really sure of which one's the right one, I start weeding out the distractors, and those are the ones that aren't right. And if you can weed out the ones that you know aren't right, then you have  a 50/50 chance and then you can pretty much narrow down if you if you have a cursory knowledge of the topic.   [00:08:26] I have a variation on that approach that I use quite a bit. And I think that definitely that that concept of narrowing down the field of possible answers to what's important and also not getting hung up on a bunch of potentially extraneous information is really important. And that's consistent even on the exam that I just took here recently, as well as certainly some of the dynamics ones that I certainly know well, just given my history with the platform and most of those questions you can get rid of to maybe sometimes three and you barely have to read the whole range of what it's going to be.   [00:09:18] And the new ones have introduced case studies, which is sometimes a lot of text to then get to the questions. And that can be kind of intimidating. You have, you know, the scenario, the requirements, the details. You've got half a dozen different tabs on that thing. Then you have questions. Here's one thing I found is on the and this is this is for the what is it Pearson view or whatever Microsoft uses for the testing centers as well as the proctored exams. You can ctrl+f to search the text. That's a little tip I found to where if you have a question about “what should the sales managers do” and you go to the scenario, do a ctrl+f to search for “sales manager” and if you find it. That usually leads you to the answer or enough detail to get the answer.   [00:10:13] Yeah, that's a good one, I was not familiar that you could actually do that. Very cool.   [00:10:19] Do you go to the test center or do you do the the proctored exam at home?   [00:10:25] I am a firm believer in going to the test center. That is the way I like to do it. There is no worry of someone walking into the room. I don't have to have the anxiety that comes off like shining a camera around to show that I don't have any cheating materials or anything I'm going to cheat with. And it's just one less thing that I have to deal with. Also, it feels official. I can actually protect that time. I don't have a. Now I have to travel to physically get to the test center so I can tell people, no, I need to be done with this call at 9 o'clock because my exam starts at 9:30 and I have to physically leave and get there. And I like having that little bit of buffer. How about you?   [00:11:15] I am the opposite. I do all my exam as online proctored exams, and a year ago when they first started doing it, it was kind of rough because you'd have to have a webcam to show all around the room. They've changed a little bit now where you they text you a little app or a Web page on your phone and you just take pictures of what you're facing, what's behind you. I've got to unplug my my external monitor and flip it around.   [00:11:44] But generally, that goes that goes very well. I lock my door. I do it from my house so I don't have co-workers walking in if my wife or kids are home. I make them swear that they will not try and get in the room because otherwise I'll fail. And maybe in Minnesota you have really nice testing centers. Frankly, the ones around me are all like dumps with computers that are 10 years old with desks that are falling apart.   [00:12:16] And I've had technical problems going to my local test center, so I think I trust it more doing it from home. And I get more flexibility. Like I have a meeting cancelled tomorrow. I'm going to take a take a certification exam and have more flexibility than when I do a testing center, usually it seems to only have availability a week out..   [00:12:39] Yeah, I'm I'm definitely scheduling mine more in advance, so that part's not an issue. Pearson is headquartered in Minnesota. So we have a million testing centers around here. There there's one that’s a ten minute drive from my house. Then I'm going to be moving soon, and the place I'm moving to there's a testing center one mile from the house. You know, I can walk there in under 20 minutes if I really needed to. And like all of them they have been reasonably nice.   [00:13:12] I mean, it's not crazy. You know, hardware quality of the machines that I'm on, but they've physically worked.   [00:13:19] The only argument or complaint that I have is I did try to take my customer service exam, which I just for whatever reason, hadn't taken previously. And this was in mid-January. And there was the threat, the threat of snow in Minnesota. Now, it hadn't actually started snowing yet.   [00:13:40] So that's like every day in the winter, right?   [00:13:43] Right. They were concerned that there was going to be snow later in the day. So they canceled at 8:00 in the morning. All the exams that they had. Now, my exam was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. I showed up at 8:45. They said, sorry, it's been canceled. You know, it's supposedly you get, I don't know, 210 minutes or something like that. Ridiculous amount of time for that exam at least.   [00:14:07] I'd never personally taken that long just because I have worked with the material so long. So I literally would have been out there out of there, even if I took that full time, by noon. Not a flake of snow fell from the sky until about 2:00 in the afternoon. I was just I was very, very frustrated with that. That was the biggest chink in the armor for going to an actual testing center.   [00:14:42] And people like Shawn Taber have this elaborate routine where he goes to the same Starbucks before he takes his exam and feels like if he doesn't do this he will fail. I don’t have this routine myself, I schedule and just jump in and take it.   [00:14:58] Sure. So I don't quite have that rigorous of a of a series of things I have to go through. It's not that regimented. I have a couple of different test centers I go to. I try to make it there about 15 minutes early. But beyond that, I just focus that energy on knowing the material and having that carry me through.   [00:15:21] Right. So the series I'm writing on LinkedIn has been a departure from the normal kind of content that I usually write. But it's been kind of an experiment because I got in on a preview of a new LinkedIn feature called newsletters. I like it because it's basically articles that are grouped into a series and people can subscribe to the series of articles. And currently I'm limited to just one newsletter, but I can see once this gets released then that I will probably have newsletters on different topics. And the really cool thing is I have people following the series that don't follow me or aren't connected to me. So it seems to have a little bit more of a life than just writing individual articles or LinkedIn posts. I created both like a WordPress blog and the LinkedIn articles. And by far, the LinkedIn newsletter is getting more traction than the blog version. So I really like that new feature of LinkedIn.   [00:16:31] Yeah, it's been great. I. As soon as I saw Joel Lindstrom is starting a newsletter, I said, oh, give it away. I'll try that out. See what it's all about. And yet I've continued reading.   [00:16:42] I don't know when they're going to release it as more of a general feature, but I would imagine it's coming soon. Once they do, I think you'll really like it. I think the problem with articles is they've just been kind of one off things. They have good findability because you can find them through Google and other places. But, you know, it seems like this is the missing piece to make articles a little bit more sticky.   [00:17:09] Yeah. If you have a topic where you have some authority or want to be able to communicate a lot without just doing a novel in a single post. It gives a way to be able to chunk that out and get good feedback from people, because when you are managing your own blog and that type of thing, you know how many people are going and leaving meaningful comments or interacting or sharing their views. If it's within LinkedIn and doing that, I think it will be a pretty cool feature. I'll take advantage of it once it is a little more prime time.   [00:17:50] So you mentioned you're moving. Where and why are you moving, Matthew?   [00:17:54] So I am moving within Minnesota. This is not weather driven. Actually, it will only be about a 10, 15 minute drive from where we are now.   [00:18:10] But so my kids are going to be in school age, coming up in the near future here. And we wanted to try to think through where do we want to be for them to go through all of their schooling and hopefully, depending on what happens, not have to move because of you need to go to a different school or not thinking that that far ahead. So we started the search. It was about eight months ago at this point that we started casually looking with a timeline of within the next couple of years, we want to try to move in. Sure enough, we found one that we were really excited about, with a good school district that we're excited about there. And a little more space. We like what we have. But as the kids start to get and a little bit more space to themselves, it'll give them that that space that they need.   [00:19:17] Great. I'm going to bring back a feature that we haven't done for for a while, which is “is that productive.”   [00:19:34] So for today's is that productive, I'm going to review my smart pen. This is something I have been using for over a year. I intentionally wanted to live with it for a while before I reviewed it. We have talked about Evernote and OneNote, and we have talked about physically writing your journal versus electronic notes. The idea of a smart pen is the merging of the two: a physical pen that can easily be transitioned into digital notes. So the pen that I started with is the Neo Smartpen N2, which is a pen that uses a specially coated paper. You can buy notebooks, such as the Moleskin notebooks, the ones that look a little bulbous, the paper sticks a little bit. It works with them. And the idea is you take notes like you would normally take notes, but you can sync those notes to your phone, to your computer, to your iPad, to almost any device. It will sync and OCR your notes. You can sync directly to OneNote or Evernote. And it's something that I found pretty indispensable. And I said my original pen because I broke my original path. I somehow damaged the sensor.   [00:21:04] I think I pushed the pen part too far in or something. And so I had to replace it because it actually got in 2018, it was out of warranty. So there's also the Moleskine version, which is the Pen+, which is basically the Neo Smatpen N2 and branded Moleskin. They're shaped a little bit differently. The N2 is more rounded where the Moleskin is kind of flatter. They have the same technology in them. But I find the Moleskine version feels better to hold In some ways, but either one are not are not bad.   And I had terrible handwriting. One of my goals has been, over the last year and a half, to improve my handwriting. And I've been successful with that. But it successfully transcribes my handwriting.   I'll give you a for instance, I was in a meeting where we were doing discovery and then transitioning the notes into user stories into Azure DevOps. So I intentionally just wrote in my Moleskine with Moleskine Pen + notebook rather than typing them into my computer. Then I was able to very quickly sync my notes, take the text transcrption, wordsmith it, and then copy and paste it into stories.   [00:22:26] And it it went very quickly. So I find it I find it extremely effective. Not every note I want to keep, but it's kind of per page I can choose. There's als a little checkbox. If you want email the notes to somebody, you can just check it. And when you sync with the app, it will email it. And what I find very useful about it is I can go into meeting and don't have to fire my laptop. I can be writing in my notebook and it saves me a ton of time transitioning that into OneNote, sharing the notes with other people, or taking an OCR of the notes. There are other things like the Rocket Notebook, where you use a regular notebook with specially designed paper to scan it with the phone. I find that the smart pen is better and there's other smart pens like I think there's one called the live scribe or something. I haven't tried those. But as for the Neo N2 or the Moleskine Pen +, which is basically N2, I would say that for me it is productive and saves me a ton of time.   [00:23:32] All right. Well, that's cool. I don't know. I mean, I still like my pen and paper for both journaling and for planning. And I'll call it more limited note taking. And my go to is still the Office Lens app to be able to pull that in, push directly into a OneNote notebook. And I can choose from either my work or my personal one notes or drop it into PDF or any of those kind of things. So that's that's still my go to I haven't graduated to trying that digital pen.   [00:24:13] Right. When (the digital pen) syncs, I don't know how it does it, but if I have a red notebook and a black notebook and if I write in the red notebook and I write in the black notebook, it knows which notebook that I'm I'm writing it in. So I don't have to deal with each page necessarily. I can just sync the pen. I've actually got three or four different notebooks, one to use for more of a journal, one I use for just personal to do type things, and one I use for meeting notes, And it keeps them separate. So you could you could do the same thing with Office Lens or whatever. So I’m not saying you have to use a digital pen. I'm just saying for me, it's very productive.   [00:25:03] The pen and multi notebook combo. Exactly.   [00:25:09] So kind of kind of related to that. Have you tried the collection feature in the chromium Edge Dev?   [00:25:19] So I have not tried that yet.   [00:25:21] I did write about that in one of my articles on my learning series, and it is something I find to be a very useful learning tool. Specifically, you can have multiple collections, you can drag and drop text and images. It's basically like the clip to OneNote, but having it in the browser and being able to build the collection, and then you can send the whole collection to OneNote or whatever you want to.   [00:25:45] I found that useful, especially for learning, because you go through Microsoft Learn, or whatever learning content you want and  just grab these snippets, put them in the collections, arrange it the way you want to, and then copy that to OneNote. It could be from different pages versus sending each snippet to one note. It's kind of easier to arrange it the way you want and build the build the collection, then send it somewhere.   [00:26:14] Sure. Now, as you're using that, are you finding that you get stuff that's like partially done in transition, sitting in that collection and hot? How do you not have orphaned content that sits out in those collections?   [00:26:32] I don’t have orphaned content. For example, when I'm studying for my field service exam, I have a collection for resource scheduling. So as I go through the multiple articles about resource scheduling, I'm grabbing sections or lists, such as the statuses of work items, because I know that's probably going to be on the exam.   [00:27:00] And then there's a diagram of the stages of work and I'll drag that over. And so then you can rearrange those pieces, drag them up, drag them down, delete them, whatever. What I'm building is kind of a study sheet that has all that detail that I want to remember on it.   [00:27:24] Got it. OK.   [00:27:25] And it's live. So if you have part of a Web site on there, you can click on it to go directly to that section of the webpage. Right in the browser.   [00:27:37] Yeah, I do like that concept, though, I feel I would have to try it, but I would still be worried that it would be one other thing to manage. I'd be trying to think back to where is that content stored, and I won't necessarily remember it was part of my learning that I was doing there. I'll try to go search one note. It's not there. It's one where I think I'd have to get hands on to figure out what the actual workflow would look like for me. That’s not a judgment, good or bad. I just can't see how that's going to land. Or I've maybe tried too many of those things and thought “oh, this is going to be great.” But it turns out it's just one more place to have to go look for something later.   [00:28:25] I don't think I'd make it my permanent home for anything. That's not what I did. I used it when I'm in a session learning things and collecting pieces about them. But I then moved it to OneNote.   [00:28:38] Yeah. And that's like a staging area.   [00:28:41] But also, I was recently researching mattresses, for example, and going to different pages that had different models and pages like Consumer Reports. Besides learning, I found Collections to be very helpful when compiling research amongst different pages for something you want to purchase as a way to collect all that information arranged the way you want. Maybe you're not keeping it permanently, it might just be for that specific focused time, then delete the collection. But I think if I was going to keep it in perpetuity and come back in and be able to find it a year from now, I would agree with you. I wouldn't keep it there permanently.   [00:29:27] Yeah. So it's important then to have that habit of actually moving it somewhere if you want to be able to get it, get it later. Otherwise, you have that challenge of one more place of contact. So either stick a fork in it because it's done or move it forward to a more permanent repository.   [00:29:45] The thing about me and taking notes. They're not so much for perpetuity. I have very few notebooks that I need to keep for long term.  

This episode is brought to you by Inogic. Check out their new Kanban visualization for Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Learning is important. Joel has started a bi-weekly LinkedIn newsletter about learning--why it is important to be a life-long learner, choosing a learning goal, and tools to help learning. On the podcast we discuss our learning goals. Matthew Anderson has also been pursuing certification, and he talks about his strategies for learning and test-taking. Other topics in the episode: Smart pens: Neo Smart pen and Moleskine Pen +. https://www.amazon.com/smartpen-N2-Bluetooth-Digital-Smartphones/dp/B00ST8GT8W/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=Neo+smartpen&qid=1582039395&sr=8-4 Edge collections: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2019/08/20/collections-now-available-microsoft-edge-preview/ Microsoft certification poster that shows the intersection of all Microsoft certifications: http://aka.ms/TrainCertPoster Taking certification exams: how to read the questions and scenarios to optimizing finding the correct answers. Going to testing center vs. online proctored exams Show notes:   [00:00:23] And Matthew. How are you doing day, Joel?   [00:00:27] I am excellent. Welcome to 2020.   [00:00:29] A little bit late in a little bit. Yeah, yeah. But we've been so productive we haven't had time for a podcast.   [00:00:36] Exactly. it's prioritization. And I think we both had that silent agreement that we have some things we're focused on right now.   [00:00:44] Well, actually, last week on my My Analytics for the first time I hit 42 percent of time for focus.   [00:00:53] Oh, congrats on that. I feel like I've graduated to new level.   [00:01:00] Yeah, I can say I have that much focused time scheduled. I am not hitting it, but I am getting more and more people to respect that time that I've got out there. So it's a it's a process. We'll say that.   [00:01:17] Right. So I've been putting a focus for 2020 on learning, trying to get some certifications as well as learn some other other things. I find that, you know, sometimes you get a little stale and you need to update your skill set, especially working with technology. You can do anything with learning in 2020.   [00:01:37] Yeah, absolutely. So the most recent certification I earned is the Azure A.I. Engineer Associate Certification.   [00:01:47] That's the A.I. 100. It was the exam. The core exam behind that one.   [00:01:53] So is this like super deep data science stuff for what is it?   [00:01:58] So it is a collection of cognitive services, including language, understanding and prediction, translation, and getting into machine learning pipelines. And how do you actually build and structure those services together to be able to meet the need for some sort of end user use case?   [00:02:22] Cool. So what what made you decide on that one versus all the other many things you could study?   [00:02:31] Yeah, so I had a stretch goal for myself around kind of getting outside of the business applications kind of silo within our product cloud, the different solution areas, I wanted to do something in Azure and I looked toward what are those things that are that I talk about the concept of in the biz app platform a lot, but I'd like to be able to go deeper and, you know, chat with folks about what's going on behind the scenes, talk intelligently around what some of those capabilities are and what really comes up a ton. Is these things around cognitive services and kind of improving those experiences using prediction automation around that. So it seemed like a really good fit. And then with the advent of the A.I. Builder Capabilities and power platform and some of what we have inside of customer insights and being able to make predictions about this kind of super set of information about customers, it just seemed like a really appropriate place to put some of that learning effort into.   [00:03:43] Definitely a hot area there. So how much time did you allocate to preparing for it?   [00:03:53] Yeah, so I have had this on my radar for about the last four and a half, maybe five months. I've been trying to go through some of the Microsoft learn capabilities or rather the learning paths that they have around that just to get familiar. But I really got serious about it when I put the I put my money where my mouth was and I scheduled the certification exam two months out. So it was mid-December. I made the decision to schedule it out for middle of February or rather early February. And just kind of use that as a way to pressure myself and really ratchet up the prep and training work that I was doing. And labs. Yeah.   [00:04:41] So that's that's key, I think. And I've been I've been writing a series of Linked-In articles about learning, because my focus has been on that since last year. I got the sales and customer service and marketing Dynamics 365 certifications and he first power platform certification. I didn't have to study at all for those because I've been doing it so long that I could just walk in and pass, maybe with just a cursory review, but the one I haven't had is field service because I just don't have as much experience with field service. I've dealt with it and worked with it. But I've never I've never taken the certification test on it before. So that was sure that was my goal. And my goal with this is just to broaden my reach outside of the normal projects that I work with. So with (the field service exam), that was kind of the first one I really had to study. And like you, I set myself a pretty aggressive goal of actually scheduling the exam. You put some teeth behind it. I've got people that are on my team or my mentor and they set a goal that “I want to get certified in xyz,” and then they never do it because they don't have a date. You got to have a date.   [00:05:59] What was going through my head the night before the exam, I was just panicking and saying I don't know if I'm actually ready. I went in and I was one click away from canceling the exam that I had for the next day. I didn't. Partially because I don't want to pay twenty two bucks to cancel this within the window. It's like five business days or something like that. You know what? I've done this much. I've put in the effort and I go take it even if I don't feel 100 percent ready. And I came out on the other side feeling pretty glad that I didn't spend the money to defer on something or I was going to pass it anyway.   [00:06:50] Right. I think when you take the more of those exams you take, you kind of recognize patterns. Not that taking more exams makes you more likely to pass another one, but it could. I've developed my own approach to taking a certification exam that helps me be more sure that I'm getting closer is the right answer. Doesn't always give me the right answer, but it gets me closer. I read the question backwards because the questions generally are set up with a scenario and a question. So the question is last and sometimes the scenario gives you extra details that you don't really need. So if you read the question, read it backwards. Read the bottom section to get the questioner and then look for the details in the scenario. You can be a lot more focused and avoid having the extra details throw you off. And then look at the scenario and then I look at the answers. And if it's not if I'm not really, really, really sure of which one's the right one, I start weeding out the distractors, and those are the ones that aren't right. And if you can weed out the ones that you know aren't right, then you have  a 50/50 chance and then you can pretty much narrow down if you if you have a cursory knowledge of the topic.   [00:08:26] I have a variation on that approach that I use quite a bit. And I think that definitely that that concept of narrowing down the field of possible answers to what's important and also not getting hung up on a bunch of potentially extraneous information is really important. And that's consistent even on the exam that I just took here recently, as well as certainly some of the dynamics ones that I certainly know well, just given my history with the platform and most of those questions you can get rid of to maybe sometimes three and you barely have to read the whole range of what it's going to be.   [00:09:18] And the new ones have introduced case studies, which is sometimes a lot of text to then get to the questions. And that can be kind of intimidating. You have, you know, the scenario, the requirements, the details. You've got half a dozen different tabs on that thing. Then you have questions. Here's one thing I found is on the and this is this is for the what is it Pearson view or whatever Microsoft uses for the testing centers as well as the proctored exams. You can ctrl+f to search the text. That's a little tip I found to where if you have a question about “what should the sales managers do” and you go to the scenario, do a ctrl+f to search for “sales manager” and if you find it. That usually leads you to the answer or enough detail to get the answer.   [00:10:13] Yeah, that's a good one, I was not familiar that you could actually do that. Very cool.   [00:10:19] Do you go to the test center or do you do the the proctored exam at home?   [00:10:25] I am a firm believer in going to the test center. That is the way I like to do it. There is no worry of someone walking into the room. I don't have to have the anxiety that comes off like shining a camera around to show that I don't have any cheating materials or anything I'm going to cheat with. And it's just one less thing that I have to deal with. Also, it feels official. I can actually protect that time. I don't have a. Now I have to travel to physically get to the test center so I can tell people, no, I need to be done with this call at 9 o'clock because my exam starts at 9:30 and I have to physically leave and get there. And I like having that little bit of buffer. How about you?   [00:11:15] I am the opposite. I do all my exam as online proctored exams, and a year ago when they first started doing it, it was kind of rough because you'd have to have a webcam to show all around the room. They've changed a little bit now where you they text you a little app or a Web page on your phone and you just take pictures of what you're facing, what's behind you. I've got to unplug my my external monitor and flip it around.   [00:11:44] But generally, that goes that goes very well. I lock my door. I do it from my house so I don't have co-workers walking in if my wife or kids are home. I make them swear that they will not try and get in the room because otherwise I'll fail. And maybe in Minnesota you have really nice testing centers. Frankly, the ones around me are all like dumps with computers that are 10 years old with desks that are falling apart.   [00:12:16] And I've had technical problems going to my local test center, so I think I trust it more doing it from home. And I get more flexibility. Like I have a meeting cancelled tomorrow. I'm going to take a take a certification exam and have more flexibility than when I do a testing center, usually it seems to only have availability a week out..   [00:12:39] Yeah, I'm I'm definitely scheduling mine more in advance, so that part's not an issue. Pearson is headquartered in Minnesota. So we have a million testing centers around here. There there's one that’s a ten minute drive from my house. Then I'm going to be moving soon, and the place I'm moving to there's a testing center one mile from the house. You know, I can walk there in under 20 minutes if I really needed to. And like all of them they have been reasonably nice.   [00:13:12] I mean, it's not crazy. You know, hardware quality of the machines that I'm on, but they've physically worked.   [00:13:19] The only argument or complaint that I have is I did try to take my customer service exam, which I just for whatever reason, hadn't taken previously. And this was in mid-January. And there was the threat, the threat of snow in Minnesota. Now, it hadn't actually started snowing yet.   [00:13:40] So that's like every day in the winter, right?   [00:13:43] Right. They were concerned that there was going to be snow later in the day. So they canceled at 8:00 in the morning. All the exams that they had. Now, my exam was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. I showed up at 8:45. They said, sorry, it's been canceled. You know, it's supposedly you get, I don't know, 210 minutes or something like that. Ridiculous amount of time for that exam at least.   [00:14:07] I'd never personally taken that long just because I have worked with the material so long. So I literally would have been out there out of there, even if I took that full time, by noon. Not a flake of snow fell from the sky until about 2:00 in the afternoon. I was just I was very, very frustrated with that. That was the biggest chink in the armor for going to an actual testing center.   [00:14:42] And people like Shawn Taber have this elaborate routine where he goes to the same Starbucks before he takes his exam and feels like if he doesn't do this he will fail. I don’t have this routine myself, I schedule and just jump in and take it.   [00:14:58] Sure. So I don't quite have that rigorous of a of a series of things I have to go through. It's not that regimented. I have a couple of different test centers I go to. I try to make it there about 15 minutes early. But beyond that, I just focus that energy on knowing the material and having that carry me through.   [00:15:21] Right. So the series I'm writing on LinkedIn has been a departure from the normal kind of content that I usually write. But it's been kind of an experiment because I got in on a preview of a new LinkedIn feature called newsletters. I like it because it's basically articles that are grouped into a series and people can subscribe to the series of articles. And currently I'm limited to just one newsletter, but I can see once this gets released then that I will probably have newsletters on different topics. And the really cool thing is I have people following the series that don't follow me or aren't connected to me. So it seems to have a little bit more of a life than just writing individual articles or LinkedIn posts. I created both like a WordPress blog and the LinkedIn articles. And by far, the LinkedIn newsletter is getting more traction than the blog version. So I really like that new feature of LinkedIn.   [00:16:31] Yeah, it's been great. I. As soon as I saw Joel Lindstrom is starting a newsletter, I said, oh, give it away. I'll try that out. See what it's all about. And yet I've continued reading.   [00:16:42] I don't know when they're going to release it as more of a general feature, but I would imagine it's coming soon. Once they do, I think you'll really like it. I think the problem with articles is they've just been kind of one off things. They have good findability because you can find them through Google and other places. But, you know, it seems like this is the missing piece to make articles a little bit more sticky.   [00:17:09] Yeah. If you have a topic where you have some authority or want to be able to communicate a lot without just doing a novel in a single post. It gives a way to be able to chunk that out and get good feedback from people, because when you are managing your own blog and that type of thing, you know how many people are going and leaving meaningful comments or interacting or sharing their views. If it's within LinkedIn and doing that, I think it will be a pretty cool feature. I'll take advantage of it once it is a little more prime time.   [00:17:50] So you mentioned you're moving. Where and why are you moving, Matthew?   [00:17:54] So I am moving within Minnesota. This is not weather driven. Actually, it will only be about a 10, 15 minute drive from where we are now.   [00:18:10] But so my kids are going to be in school age, coming up in the near future here. And we wanted to try to think through where do we want to be for them to go through all of their schooling and hopefully, depending on what happens, not have to move because of you need to go to a different school or not thinking that that far ahead. So we started the search. It was about eight months ago at this point that we started casually looking with a timeline of within the next couple of years, we want to try to move in. Sure enough, we found one that we were really excited about, with a good school district that we're excited about there. And a little more space. We like what we have. But as the kids start to get and a little bit more space to themselves, it'll give them that that space that they need.   [00:19:17] Great. I'm going to bring back a feature that we haven't done for for a while, which is “is that productive.”   [00:19:34] So for today's is that productive, I'm going to review my smart pen. This is something I have been using for over a year. I intentionally wanted to live with it for a while before I reviewed it. We have talked about Evernote and OneNote, and we have talked about physically writing your journal versus electronic notes. The idea of a smart pen is the merging of the two: a physical pen that can easily be transitioned into digital notes. So the pen that I started with is the Neo Smartpen N2, which is a pen that uses a specially coated paper. You can buy notebooks, such as the Moleskin notebooks, the ones that look a little bulbous, the paper sticks a little bit. It works with them. And the idea is you take notes like you would normally take notes, but you can sync those notes to your phone, to your computer, to your iPad, to almost any device. It will sync and OCR your notes. You can sync directly to OneNote or Evernote. And it's something that I found pretty indispensable. And I said my original pen because I broke my original path. I somehow damaged the sensor.   [00:21:04] I think I pushed the pen part too far in or something. And so I had to replace it because it actually got in 2018, it was out of warranty. So there's also the Moleskine version, which is the Pen+, which is basically the Neo Smatpen N2 and branded Moleskin. They're shaped a little bit differently. The N2 is more rounded where the Moleskin is kind of flatter. They have the same technology in them. But I find the Moleskine version feels better to hold In some ways, but either one are not are not bad.   And I had terrible handwriting. One of my goals has been, over the last year and a half, to improve my handwriting. And I've been successful with that. But it successfully transcribes my handwriting.   I'll give you a for instance, I was in a meeting where we were doing discovery and then transitioning the notes into user stories into Azure DevOps. So I intentionally just wrote in my Moleskine with Moleskine Pen + notebook rather than typing them into my computer. Then I was able to very quickly sync my notes, take the text transcrption, wordsmith it, and then copy and paste it into stories.   [00:22:26] And it it went very quickly. So I find it I find it extremely effective. Not every note I want to keep, but it's kind of per page I can choose. There's als a little checkbox. If you want email the notes to somebody, you can just check it. And when you sync with the app, it will email it. And what I find very useful about it is I can go into meeting and don't have to fire my laptop. I can be writing in my notebook and it saves me a ton of time transitioning that into OneNote, sharing the notes with other people, or taking an OCR of the notes. There are other things like the Rocket Notebook, where you use a regular notebook with specially designed paper to scan it with the phone. I find that the smart pen is better and there's other smart pens like I think there's one called the live scribe or something. I haven't tried those. But as for the Neo N2 or the Moleskine Pen +, which is basically N2, I would say that for me it is productive and saves me a ton of time.   [00:23:32] All right. Well, that's cool. I don't know. I mean, I still like my pen and paper for both journaling and for planning. And I'll call it more limited note taking. And my go to is still the Office Lens app to be able to pull that in, push directly into a OneNote notebook. And I can choose from either my work or my personal one notes or drop it into PDF or any of those kind of things. So that's that's still my go to I haven't graduated to trying that digital pen.   [00:24:13] Right. When (the digital pen) syncs, I don't know how it does it, but if I have a red notebook and a black notebook and if I write in the red notebook and I write in the black notebook, it knows which notebook that I'm I'm writing it in. So I don't have to deal with each page necessarily. I can just sync the pen. I've actually got three or four different notebooks, one to use for more of a journal, one I use for just personal to do type things, and one I use for meeting notes, And it keeps them separate. So you could you could do the same thing with Office Lens or whatever. So I’m not saying you have to use a digital pen. I'm just saying for me, it's very productive.   [00:25:03] The pen and multi notebook combo. Exactly.   [00:25:09] So kind of kind of related to that. Have you tried the collection feature in the chromium Edge Dev?   [00:25:19] So I have not tried that yet.   [00:25:21] I did write about that in one of my articles on my learning series, and it is something I find to be a very useful learning tool. Specifically, you can have multiple collections, you can drag and drop text and images. It's basically like the clip to OneNote, but having it in the browser and being able to build the collection, and then you can send the whole collection to OneNote or whatever you want to.   [00:25:45] I found that useful, especially for learning, because you go through Microsoft Learn, or whatever learning content you want and  just grab these snippets, put them in the collections, arrange it the way you want to, and then copy that to OneNote. It could be from different pages versus sending each snippet to one note. It's kind of easier to arrange it the way you want and build the build the collection, then send it somewhere.   [00:26:14] Sure. Now, as you're using that, are you finding that you get stuff that's like partially done in transition, sitting in that collection and hot? How do you not have orphaned content that sits out in those collections?   [00:26:32] I don’t have orphaned content. For example, when I'm studying for my field service exam, I have a collection for resource scheduling. So as I go through the multiple articles about resource scheduling, I'm grabbing sections or lists, such as the statuses of work items, because I know that's probably going to be on the exam.   [00:27:00] And then there's a diagram of the stages of work and I'll drag that over. And so then you can rearrange those pieces, drag them up, drag them down, delete them, whatever. What I'm building is kind of a study sheet that has all that detail that I want to remember on it.   [00:27:24] Got it. OK.   [00:27:25] And it's live. So if you have part of a Web site on there, you can click on it to go directly to that section of the webpage. Right in the browser.   [00:27:37] Yeah, I do like that concept, though, I feel I would have to try it, but I would still be worried that it would be one other thing to manage. I'd be trying to think back to where is that content stored, and I won't necessarily remember it was part of my learning that I was doing there. I'll try to go search one note. It's not there. It's one where I think I'd have to get hands on to figure out what the actual workflow would look like for me. That’s not a judgment, good or bad. I just can't see how that's going to land. Or I've maybe tried too many of those things and thought “oh, this is going to be great.” But it turns out it's just one more place to have to go look for something later.   [00:28:25] I don't think I'd make it my permanent home for anything. That's not what I did. I used it when I'm in a session learning things and collecting pieces about them. But I then moved it to OneNote.   [00:28:38] Yeah. And that's like a staging area.   [00:28:41] But also, I was recently researching mattresses, for example, and going to different pages that had different models and pages like Consumer Reports. Besides learning, I found Collections to be very helpful when compiling research amongst different pages for something you want to purchase as a way to collect all that information arranged the way you want. Maybe you're not keeping it permanently, it might just be for that specific focused time, then delete the collection. But I think if I was going to keep it in perpetuity and come back in and be able to find it a year from now, I would agree with you. I wouldn't keep it there permanently.   [00:29:27] Yeah. So it's important then to have that habit of actually moving it somewhere if you want to be able to get it, get it later. Otherwise, you have that challenge of one more place of contact. So either stick a fork in it because it's done or move it forward to a more permanent repository.   [00:29:45] The thing about me and taking notes. They're not so much for perpetuity. I have very few notebooks that I need to keep for long term.  

This devotional episode is based on 1 Peter 4:7-11. We wanted to share how Love covers a multitude of sins and why it is so important that we love with this level of eagerness.1 Peter 4:7-11 The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.PrayerDear Lord,We lift up our hearts to you right now and ask that you would make us a people who love others earnestly. Holy Spirit direct our hearts and remind us of your word. We pray we would above all things love others. We pray we would love our spouse, our children, our friends, and those who are in our life. May your love pour out of us. May your love pouring out of us transform our marriages. We pray others would be impacted by the love we share. We pray we would be able to love so deeply that it covers a multitude of sin. We pray that instead of shame or guilt, people would feel undoubtedly loved by us and by you. We pray for your word to be fulfilled through our choices to walk in love and that your will would be done.In Jesus’ name, amen! READ TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith, with "Marriage After God." - [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. - [Aaron] And today we're gonna talk about how love covers a multitude of sin. Welcome to the "Marriage After God" podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. - [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. - [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. - [Jennifer] We have been married over a decade. - [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. - [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. - [Aaron] With a desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. - [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life, - Love, - And power, - [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God, - [Jennifer] Together. - [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. - [Jennifer] This is "Marriage After God." Okay Aaron, so we, we survived kind of a hard week. - [Aaron] We did survive. - I mean, - We're barely coming on - Our kids survived. - The other side of it, yes. - [Jennifer] But we're not the only ones going through this, so we thought we would just give you guys a little update of our family and hopefully encourage some of you out there who it might be hitting as well. - [Aaron] Yeah, our whole family got the flu. It was bad, but not bad. It was kind of a weird thing. - [Jennifer] Well, I'll say this, the Lord spared me and gave me the grace to be able to help everyone. 'Cause I felt-- - And you didn't even really get sick, you got some of the, like you felt sick. - Yeah you know the gut pain? - [Aaron] But you didn't have any other symptoms, which was awesome. - And the rosy cheeks. I felt like every once in a while, like I really don't feel good right now, I need to go lay down, but for the most part, I was able to be there to help everyone. Which made me really nervous, because people were, you and the kids were throwing up and I just thought, me, at this stage of the game in pregnancy, throwing up would not go over well with my body. - No and so-- - That woulda been terrible. - [Aaron] We're definitely thanking God, which we did a lot of, oddly. But not to be too graphic, but I'm pretty sure I put a rib out from how hard I was throwing up. - [Jennifer] That sucks. - [Aaron] Yeah, it still is really sore. But, what's awesome is, a couple of things, I just wanna praise you Jennifer, because I feel like you handled everyone being sick, and the inconvenience of it so well. I think I even told you, I was like, "I can tell you're walking in the spirit." Like your attitude was good, how much cleaning had to be done. - [Jennifer] It was a lot of work. - [Aaron] It's no fun when literally all the boys are throwing up and it's like, there's no clean blankets. - [Jennifer] It's all at the same time. - [Aaron] Yeah, so we, but we survived, we're coming on the other side of that. But one thing we practiced, I don't think we've ever done it before, not that we're not thankful to God. - [Jennifer] Not in this kind of circumstance, it's not at the forefront of our minds. - [Aaron] I did a post a couple weeks ago encouraging men to thank God for everything, if they get cut off in traffic, if something bad happens, even-- - [Jennifer] You didn't say if your whole family comes down with sickness, did you? - [Aaron] I know, if something good happens, I just said, say, whatever it is that happens today, thank God for it. And I tried practicing that. And so I'm literally in the fetal position in the bathtub, and I'm trying to thank God. I'm like, "Okay God, thank you. "Thank you for being sick." And I was like, why am I thanking God for this? Well, thank you for reminding me that I'm human. Like I'm fragile. Thank you for reminding me that one day I'm not gonna have this sickness. - [Jennifer] Or that we need to pray. - [Aaron] Yeah thank you for reminding, - Ask him. - Humbling me, showing me that my weakness. So there was a lot of things to thank God for for being sick, and I directly thanked God for being sick. And then we of course have thanked God for healing us and sparing our family from being even worse, 'cause it probably could have been worse. - [Jennifer] Something that really stood out to me is I didn't know you had this perspective kind of going into everyone being sick, and I wouldn't say I was there with you in those beginning moments, but you brought the family to the living room, and you said, "You know what, we're gonna pray, "and we're just gonna thank God today." And I think even one of the kids asked, "Why are we thanking God?" - [Aaron] Doesn't make any sense. - [Jennifer] But I was questioning it in my own heart too, like, okay, where's this going? But it was so beautiful to hear your prayer and you starting out saying, "God, thank you for this sickness." And it was humbling for me and for my heart to go, "oh yeah" you know? And to have that perspective before him. And then, I gotta share this other experience is just a friend of mine who, their family also got it really bad. - [Aaron] Pretty much our whole church got sick. - [Jennifer] But I met up with her for coffee when it was all past and she goes, "You know I just found, we found our whole family "just worshiping God through it." And it was so cool, kinda the same thing. And I said, "I didn't really worship him through it, "but at the end of all the laundry being done, "all the bathrooms being cleaned, "and having taken a shower, I came out singing "'Victory in Jesus' so, that was awesome." - [Aaron] But it is worship. Thanking God is worship. So whatever he gives, I think Job says it, "Should we not thank God for the good and the evil?" Like the bad things that happen? We thank God for those too, because he's God and he deserves our thanksgiving. And at the end of the day, salvation is so much greater than anything that we can go through. So, at minimum you can be like, "God, thank you so much "that one day I'm gonna be with you." That is so good. - [Jennifer] So if your family happens to get hit by whatever bug this is, - [Aaron] It's going around, yeah. - [Jennifer] Whatever's going around, we just wanted to encourage you guys to move forward with a thankful heart and to trust God and to be prayerful. And also just to be patient, because we know it's an inconvenience, we know it's hard, it takes away from your work schedule, it takes away from things on your to-do list that maybe you were hoping to do or whatever it is. We know it's hard, but if God's allowing it to happen, we can trust him and walk through it with him. - [Aaron] Yeah, so that was just a little update on our flu campaign. But we wanna encourage you. We have a new challenge. We've been doing a lot of these lately, a lot of new downloads and challenges and free things that you guys can get from us. And our new one's called the parentingprayerchallenge.com. We launched it last week and this week you get to do it. We're still encouraging parents to sign up to pray for either their daughter or their son or both. So if you haven't signed up for the Parenting Prayer Challenge, it's completely free. We're gonna send you 31 prompts every day, encouraging you to pray for different things for your child. - Over 31 days. - Over 31 days. - [Jennifer] Not 31 emails in one day. - [Aaron] Yeah, that's happened one time. Yeah, one a day, and the whole idea is that at the end of the 31 days you've built a habit of praying for your children. I'm sure all you parents love to pray for your children, but we just wanted to give this resource to encourage you to pray more, to pray deeper, to pray more consistently and give you ideas on what other things to pray for for your kids. - [Jennifer] Yeah, and I'll add this, it goes hand in hand with our books, "31 prayers for your son and for your daughter." And if you have those books, oh this'll be an incredible reminder. It's kinda like an alarm, right? Because your email comes through and then you're like, "Oh yeah." So you can get the book and go along with it that way too. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, so parentingprayerchallenge.com, all one word, spelled the way you would think it's spelled. And sign up for free today. All right guys, we've been doing this new thing, we've mentioned it a few times this season. We're trying to do a marriage episode, we're doing a devotional style episode, a Q&A, we're trying to give a little bit more diversity on the kinds of things we're bringing up and this episode's gonna be a devotional style. We're gonna talk about some scripture. And something that we've been learning, something that I taught on at church. And so we hope it encourages you and why don't you, Jennifer start off by reading-- - [Jennifer] Oh, I was gonna sit back and let you teach for 30 minutes, yeah. - [Aaron] Oh, I'll just do it? No. - Go for it. - [Aaron] Why don't you read the scripture that we're gonna be talking about, - Okay. - And then we'll go into it. - [Jennifer] So it's 1 Peter 4:7-11 and it says this, "The end of all things is at hand, "therefore be self controlled "and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly "since love covers a multitude of sins." - [Aaron] This is a great scripture in 1 Peter and we're excited to talk about it and what it means for us as believers, not only in our marriages, but just in life in general and walking in the body of Christ. And the power that is in our love for one another. And what that means and looks like. So we're gonna dig into this, these few scriptures, and kinda break it down and talk about some stuff and Jennifer you might have some questions. But we're just gonna break it down and see how this applies to us in our life. So the first thing I wanna point out is where our perspective should be. And Jennifer you read it, the very first thing it says in verse seven is "The end of all things is at hand." - [Jennifer] I feel like there should be an exclamation mark. - [Aaron] And it's almost is, it's a semicolon which says everything I'm about to say is attached to this statement. The end of all things is at hand, and so, we can easily, quickly think this is talking about Jesus coming back, or the end of days, right? But in the New Testament when it talks about the end of days or all things at hand or the end of the generation, it's mostly talking about all of the things that needed to take place, they needed to occur for the salvation story, for redemption, God's plan for redemption that he's been planning and preparing since Adam and Eve in the garden. And so, when Peter says the end of all things is at hand, he's saying that essentially, Christ has been born, he's died, and he's resurrected. - [Jennifer] Like we have what we need. - [Aaron] The thing that God has planned to take place has taken place. - Yeah. - [Aaron] Which means a lot. It means that we can now draw near to God. It means that we now can have salvation and a right relationship with God. Because without the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and his ascension and him sending the holy spirit there is no, like we can't be made right with God. So all of those things, the end of all things is at hand. The end of everything that God planned for salvation has been done, as Jesus says on the cross, it is finished. So it didn't necessarily mean that hey, the end of the world is tomorrow. But it's also an allusion, it alludes to Christ returning. Because now that the church age has begun, the spirit is living in man, we're made right with God, the bride of Christ is growing, we have an expectation of Christ's return. So we're in this imminent return zone. Like at any moment Christ can come back. - [Jennifer] And we are, we're called to walk a certain way. - [Aaron] Yeah. And so that's kinda, he starts off these statements with here's how you should be thinking. Realize first and foremost you have everything you need because Christ died and resurrected. He's given you his spirit, so now you can walk in his spirit and not the flesh. Like the things that we need to accomplish what he's about to tell us have already happened and are already available to us and been given to us. So that's our perspective in our relationships with our spouse, our children, our church body. That the end of all things is at hand. Like first and foremost, I have everything I need in Christ Jesus, to walk this way that we're about to talk about. And I walk this way because I look forward to Christ coming back, and I wanna not be ashamed at his return, I wanna stand boldly at his return. I wanna be excited for his return. - [Jennifer] It gives those relationships a lot of depth and purpose, how we interact with each other and how we're supposed to be in those relationships with each other. - [Aaron] Right and so, if you think about your marriage. You say, "Well, I just can't because my husband "is this, this, this." - [Jennifer] Or together you're just facing a really hard circumstance. - [Aaron] Yeah, like we went through stuff. And it's like, oh, our love for each other is stifled because of this hard circumstance or these character traits in the other person. But if our mindsets are on wow, first of all I can, because Christ did, and I should, because Christ is coming. My perspective and the way I treated you and the way we treat others would totally be transformed because we're no longer thinking of this immediate, well how did you treat me and how am I gonna treat you? - [Jennifer] Well, it's not about us. - Exactly. - Right? - [Aaron] Which is a powerful thing. And this is being taught to the believer, but the ramifications for this is in every aspect of your life. Most directly in your marriage and then also most directly in all of your relationships with other believers in the church. We need to have this perspective. - [Jennifer] Okay, so, then moving on in that verse, the next word is therefore. - [Aaron] Yeah and-- - [Jennifer] So the end of all things is at hand, - [Both] Therefore. - [Aaron] Yeah, and someone always says, "What's therefore there for?" I mean you ask yourself, "Well, why is that there?" And it's attached to the last statement. So, since the end of all things is at hand, be this way. And what does it say right there, Jennifer? - [Jennifer] Be self controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. - [Aaron] So, in relation to our relationships and in our life and in the way we interact in this world, self-controlled, how often do we say the word self-controlled in our house? - [Jennifer] Well, we're in the beginning stages of training our kids, so I feel like we say it all the time, multiple times a day. - [Aaron] 150,000 times a day. Are you being self-controlled? - Remember, self-control. - [Aaron] Be self-controlled, you're not being self-controlled. You must have self-control. Like over and over and over again. 'Cause that's, I mean our kids are learning to have control over themselves, that's the point. But self-controlled meaning, in my life, am I in control or is my flesh in control? 'Cause when my flesh is in control, we are not self-controlled. We're gonna eat as much as-- - We just give way - We want. - To whatever we want, yeah. - [Aaron] When I'm angry, I'm just gonna say what I wanna say. Oh, well, I was angry, that's why I said that. Well, that's not self-controlled. That's just blurting out what's coming to your mind because you're angry, rather than considering the other person. - [Jennifer] Which the mind is the next thing it says. - [Aaron] Yeah, sober-minded, which yes, this is talking about sobriety, not on drugs, not drunk with alcohol, but sober-minded is much more than just, we talked about this in another episode. I can't remember the name of the other episode, but it's having a right way of thinking. A clear way of thinking. So if you think about, we just talked about anger. You know Jennifer, you do something that really frustrates me and then I get so angry I just start saying whatever I want, like I'm not being sober-minded. I'm letting my wrath and my anger control my words and my actions, rather than my mind. - [Jennifer] It's like being self-controlled of your mind specifically. - Right. - [Jennifer] Like being able to have those thought processes and walk yourself through it mentally. - [Aaron] Another example of being sober-minded is fear. So, there's nothing wrong with natural fear, like you know fire's gonna burn you, so you don't touch it, but we're talking about like there's something going on in the world and it's causing us to have this anxiety and fear which causes us to make decisions and not seek out wisdom and oh, we're gonna go do this thing because XYZ over here, I don't know how that's gonna turn out, therefore we're gonna. And so that's not sober-minded either. Instead of thinking through what is reality, thinking through what is the repercussions if XYZ happens or if we don't have what we need or if, like thinking sober-minded is rather than operating in the fear and just making decisions off that, you're operating in knowledge and wisdom and you seek counsel and you're slow to act, slow to speak. So that's the idea of sober-minded. So since we know that the end of all things is at hand, meaning we have everything we need in Christ, meaning all of the things that God planned for redemption has happened, you have the holy spirit, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. - [Jennifer] So real quick, I just have to, just hearing you repeat that, it says, "Be self-controlled and sober-minded "for the sake of your prayers," that means you're praying. So it's almost like it's saying be self-controlled and sober-minded and prayerful. Like be a person of prayer. - [Aaron] Right, and we just talked about being sick. If our minds were in this position of thankfulness and we were just wallowing in the suffering, 'cause throwing up's not fun, not feeling good is not fun, and we could just sit there and be like woe is us. And we're not even being sober-minded in that. But instead we're like, "Thank you Lord." It actually helped us elevate above our current circumstances to be able to see it from a heavenly position. Like, okay, well, just because this thing is happening, doesn't mean I stop being a Christian. Doesn't mean I can now act XYZ, be this way, say these things. No, I actually even in this, can walk this out. Because we know all things have been fulfilled in Christ, and his return is imminent, even in my sickness I get to say, "Well if Christ was to come right now, "I wanna be like him, wanna look like him." This is how we must live as people who claim the name of Jesus. We can't claim the name, but not walk it out. - [Jennifer] Mm-hmm, okay so before you move on, I feel like maybe some of our listeners would have the same question, and that is, it says "for the sake of your prayers" so does that mean your prayers are in trouble if you're not being self-controlled or you're not being sober-minded? What does that mean? - [Aaron] Yeah, I mean, in 1 Peter I think we get another picture of that when it talks about husbands walking with their wives in an understanding way, it says for the sake of your prayers. So, there is a way that the believer can walk that would hinder our prayers. And it could be put this way, someone told me once, "God's not gonna tell you "to do a new thing until you've done the old thing." Like the thing he's asked you to do already. And so it's almost like this, we're looking for a new word from the Lord, we're looking for guidance and wisdom. And he's like, well, but you're not even loving your wife right now. - Mm-hmm, I have a really good example of this when it comes to kids. Olive, just I think it was yesterday, she came up to me and she was like, "Mom, I don't have anything to do." And so I gave her something to do, it was a small task. And she turned around really quickly and said, "I don't wanna do that." - [Aaron] What else can I do? - [Jennifer] What else can I do? And I looked at her, I said, "Sweetheart, "can you go do what Mommy asked you to do?" - [Aaron] Right. Yeah, and there's even a scripture that says, "Go back and do the first things "that you've been told to do." Like you've left your first love, we learned in Revelations. There's this idea of like, God's already given us some commands, given us some things to do as believers. In his power, to do it, and we wanna skip over those things and we're gonna talk about this. We wanna skip over those things to get to the other things. We're like, "Well, I don't wanna do that thing." Loving that person's difficult. Or, praying for that person, ehh, let's pray for this big thing over here. - [Jennifer] Or how about, "I'll be self-controlled, "but I don't care about being sober-minded." - Exactly yeah. - You know what I mean? - [Aaron] Which doesn't make any sense because, - [Jennifer] I know. - [Aaron] If you're not sober, like let's talk about being drunk, you're not in self-control either. Those things go hand in hand. So yes, the Bible teaches that our prayers can be hindered. I don't know exactly what that means, does that mean that God doesn't hear 'em at all? Or is it that I am hindered? Like I'm not gonna want to pray more. I don't have a desire to, I'm frustrated. No, Lord, I don't want to. It's like when our, like you said our kids, when they have an attitude, Wyatt crosses his arms, puts his head down, it's like he doesn't wanna look at us. - [Jennifer] Or like that example you gave of us being sick, if we weren't sober-minded and self-controlled, we wouldn't have prayed in thankfulness, so yeah, hindered in a way that if we're not walking that way and we're not being that way then we won't be praying at all. - Yeah so, - We won't be a people of prayer. - Regardless of how it plays out, I don't want either of those things. I wanna be able to come to God boldly and I also want God to receive me and hear my prayers. The Bible tells us that the prayers of a righteous man availeth much, it's in James. And I want my prayers heard. I want them to avail much. And when I pray for my family, when I pray for health, when I pray for opportunities, when I pray for other, my family members, when I pray for the lost, I want those prayers to be heard and to have power with God. So, God says, "Well be sober-minded and self-controlled "so that your prayers won't be hindered." Then I should just do that. - [Jennifer] Do it. - [Aaron] It's not easy all the time, but that's what we get to do, because the end of all things is at hand, so I should be able to do it. Okay, so let's move on to this next part of this verse. - [Jennifer] Well the next verse. - [Aaron] Yeah, the next verse, there ya go. Verse eight starts off, it says, "Above all." Okay, and I just wanted to highlight this idea, so if you're in your Bible, which that'd be awesome if you were, you should be. It says, "Above all," comma, "keep loving one another earnestly." And I just wrote down some ideas of what's the all? Like above all, above how generous you might be financially, like, "I've given so much." Above being right, like "Well I know "that this scripture means this." Above memorizing every scripture, above being debt free, above your health, above your safety, above all. Above everything that you see as good, 'cause these things are good, for the most part, don't neglect to do this thing. So, above all, do this thing, right? - [Jennifer] Do you think it's easy for us in our flesh to justify like, "Well, I don't have to love that person, "and we don't even get along, but I'm doing this "over here, so, I'm good with God because this over here." Do you hear what I'm saying? - [Aaron] Yeah, we do this all the time, and there's a scripture that I'll bring up that shows this hypocrisy. Like, "Well no, that person doesn't need to be in my life, "because of XY and Z, but, you know what? "But I read every day, I'm in the word every day." "Oh but I pray, I'll pray for that person. "I don't have to love 'em, but I'll pray for 'em." I think something that I've heard a lot, and it doesn't make any sense, but we say this, "Oh, I love him, I just don't like him." Almost as if love is this general like, yeah we're in the same city, but I'm never gonna talk to him, I'm not gonna be kind to him, I'm not gonna be cordial, I'm not gonna even, I don't wanna go out of my way for them. I'm not gonna give to them, I'm not gonna help them, I'm not gonna. So what love is that? - [Jennifer] If you're doing that, I was gonna say, what's your definition of love? - [Aaron] And that's my point is we, okay, I'll just do this. So the point of everything I said above all, or not that we shouldn't do those other things, 'cause I never want someone to be like, "Well, all we have to do is love others, "and we don't have to be generous, "and we don't have to read our word and memorize scripture." These things that are actually really good for us. "And my health and my, all these things don't matter, "as long as I just love." No. All of those things matter, but we don't neglect this one thing, and often it's the one thing we neglect. We work on all those other things, 'cause we have, those are easier, those are personal. We can control 'em. We can't control other people and that's why it's so hard. And I think of this in Matthew 23:23 Jesus says this, he says, "Woe to you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, "for you tithe mint and dill and cumin, "and have neglected the weightier matters of the law." And then get what he says, "Justice, mercy and faithfulness. "These you ought to have done "without neglecting the others." - [Jennifer] Like do it all. - [Aaron] He's like, "Yeah, you spent time, "you outwardly show all these good things that you do, "yet you've neglected justice, like you don't care "about those in your midst who need justice "and you've been unjust." Or showing mercy and faithfulness. You haven't remained faithful to your spouses, you haven't remained faithful to your people, you haven't remained faithful to, and he's saying these things you should have done without neglecting those other things that you do. And so that was the point I was getting at is like yeah, all those other things are good, but we cannot throw out loving one another earnestly. - [Jennifer] So you used the word earnestly, why don't you define that, just for our listeners really quick? - [Aaron] Okay, 'cause it's a pretty powerful word and it's how he wants us to love each other. It's not like, "Hey, I love you, yeah I'll see you later. "Oh yeah, we're good buddies." It's something deeper than that. He says, "Love one another earnestly." And the definition of earnestly means with sincere and intense conviction. It's so powerful. It's not just a, in passing a word you just say about someone, it's a life lived out way of loving. It's a my actions and the way I think reflect the deepness of my conviction and belief about how I love you. And so a perfect example is in marriage. I love you, and it's not just a word. I show you by how I take care of you. And how I show up every day and how I sit and talk with you. And how I ask for forgiveness, and I'm patient, and all these things are the actions of my love for you. - [Jennifer] Yeah, I think that's really important to point out, because I think in marriage specifically, you can text each other back and forth, I love you, or say it at the end of a phone call, conversation. Saying it in passing or before you leave to go to work. But are your actions proving what those words actually mean? So you've convinced yourself in your mind, yeah, of course I love my husband, of course I love my wife. And I tell them every day. - [Aaron] How do they know? - [Jennifer] But, are your actions supporting your words? - [Aaron] Yeah, and so let's break down this definition a little bit, it says with a sincere and intense conviction, that's the earnestness. Sincere means free from pretense or deceit. Proceeding from genuine feelings. So I don't just say it, it's not just a word that I use so that I look good with my other Christian friends and brothers and sisters. - Or that you know you should use because you're married. - [Aaron] Yeah, like, "Oh yeah, of course I love so-and-so." But yet, you don't truly believe it in your heart. You struggle with believing, like well, do I love him? I mean, I could move on. I'm not going to, 'cause I don't wanna look bad. That's not love, it's a free from pretense or deceit. So there's nothing, you're not saying it to receive anything like, "Oh good, so good that you love that person." And you're not saying it out of, it's not a lie. When you say you love someone it's truthful. It's a genuine, genuineness, a real thing from with inside of you. And then that second part, intense conviction. And I smashed two definitions together, 'cause the word intense and conviction I put them together and it's a highly concentrated and firmly held belief in what you are doing, right? So, it's not going away. My love for my brothers and sisters in Christ, my love for others in the world, my love for my wife, it's real and it's going to drive my actions and my decisions and my attitudes and it's gonna cause me to repent and it's gonna cause me to change and grow because that conviction is solid. It's there, and when I'm challenged in that conviction, when the listener is challenged in that conviction of love, they get to ask themselves, "Well do I truly love so-and-so?" And then they get to remember, well, the end of all things is at hand, I must love so-and-so, regardless. Without pretense, it needs to be truthful and powerful. That's what that word earnestly means. - [Jennifer] I love that definition of intense conviction that you shared, and it makes me think how intentional this type of love truly is, because-- - [Aaron] That's a good word, intentional. - [Jennifer] Yeah, it's intentional because you're motivated by your, like it said, "firmly held belief in what you are doing" so everything that I do in our home, everything I do with our kids, everything I do with you, comes out and is an overflow of this belief that I have that I truly love you and that genuine feeling that you talked about earlier. And that's such a different situation when you compare it to just saying the words I love you or just going about your day without any motivations as to why you're doing those things, you know? It makes me think of the type of motivational speaking you hear when it comes to entrepreneurship, where it's like, "You gotta know your why." You gotta know your why. - Yeah, what's your why? - [Jennifer] What's your why? So it makes me go there when I think about in marriage, why are you doing all the little things that you do throughout your day? It's because you love that person. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, and it's not superficial, and it's not just a word, but it's an actual held belief. Like "No, I love my wife. "I love John over there." Like truly love them, not just, "We're Christians "and we love each other." - Right. And if we truly consider this you guys, then when we get into a hard spot in marriage, when we get into conflict or something happens unexpectedly that you don't desire, you can continue on, because there's this hope knowing that, "Well no, I love them. "You know, I know this is hard, but God's given me "a love for them." - [Aaron] Yeah. What I think is really cool, I just thought about this, often we think about this idea of growing in love, which we do, we change and our level of love deepens. - It deepens, yeah. - [Aaron] But it's actually, the way this is stated, it's actually a starting point. We start at this basis of love for one another. Not build into it. It starts at this place and I thought that was really cool. I just was, - I like that. - [Aaron] I was just thinking it's like it's not, yeah, it does grow over time, but it's also, like you said, even in those hard times, you default to that position of love. Not default to, well we're not in love because, or we're building in love and the default position is no love. That's not actually, I mean marriage starts, usually, for the most part, with a deep conviction of love. And so the default position is love. And I didn't have the scripture originally here, but I thought about this and I think it goes perfectly well. What this level of love is supposed to look like, it's supposed to be remarkable. It's not supposed to look like the love of the world. Like the world loves itself. There's people that they love their own and they do a good job of that, but the love that Christians are supposed to have for one another is supposed to be remarkable, miraculous. And Jesus puts it this way in John 13:34. "A new commandment I give to you, "that you love one another. "Just as I have loved you, "you also are to love one another. "By this all people will know that you are my disciples "if you have love for one another." So it's not like, if we do these great things, or if we have this great band, or if we preach this great message, it says if you love one another the way I loved you, the whole world will know, oh that's a disciple of Christ. - [Jennifer] Yeah. - [Aaron] That's remarkable. So I get, the question I have in your marriage, in your relationships at church, would the world look at how you love them as remarkable? Like that's a remarkable love. How could he love like that? How could she love like that after so much has happened to her, after this or that? It's a remarkable love and it can only be done with Jesus Christ. That's what he says, "If you love as I have loved you." Which is an amazing, amazing kind of love. It's literally remarkable. And I have some notes here and this is, this is exactly why churches fall apart. This is why friendships dissolve, this is why marriages end. When we let the intensity of our conviction to love each other soften. We got to that point a few years into our marriage. Our conviction to love one another, because of the things we were going through, got weakened. - [Jennifer] I was gonna say, I don't feel like softens is just the right word because it sounds mushy-gushy, but I mean we're talking about the dissolving of that belief and conviction. - [Aaron] Yeah. And it's not that those things that were happening had some external power to weaken our love for each other superficially, - We chose that. - We let our love, yeah we chose it, that's a good word. And so, I just wanna ask you, as we get into this, have you let your love, the earnestness of your love for your spouse, for other believers, weaken? For whatever reason, because someone hurt you, because someone said something harmful about you, because someone didn't pay you back? - [Jennifer] The relationship's messy or hard or challenging and you just wanna, - Walk away. - Walk away. - It'd be easier. - Yeah. - [Aaron] There's been so many times I've thought to myself, it would just be easier to move. - [Jennifer] Well, we thought that in the beginning of our marriage when we were facing hardship and we got to the point at the end of three and a half years where we were, so incredibly close to walking away convinced in our selfish flesh that it would be better for each other if we just separated. - [Aaron] Move on. - [Jennifer] And instead, God got ahold of our hearts in a remarkable way and, I mean he brought the message to you first and then to me, but it's a choice. - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] And are we gonna let our circumstances dictate that choice or are we gonna choose it in our hearts and move past the circumstances? Or even if we have to deal with the circumstances for the rest of our life, and that was the commitment we had to choose. There came this pivotal moment where, people who've read our books, they know what I'm talking about, but we're standing in church, Aaron, and you're sharing this heart that God has given you for our marriage to continue on regardless if anything changed. That is remarkable. And that saved us, that saved our marriage. - [Aaron] And here's the difference in the types of love. The love that the world has for itself, and the love that we are to have for our brothers and sisters and our spouse. The love that Christ gave to us was unconditional. The love that we try and walk in is often transactional. You do this, I'll do this. You give me this, I'll give you that. Oh you didn't do the thing, or you weren't the certain way? Then I'm not going to. Jesus it says, "Yet while we were still sinners died for us." So even when we were weakest, when we couldn't save ourselves, Christ died. Christ gave himself up for his bride. And this is the message that Christ gave me that day, reminding me, he's like, "Hey are you gonna love "your wife unconditionally, or transactionally? "Are you gonna love her regardless if she ever gives you "what you think you deserve, what you ought to have? "Or are you gonna love her like I did "when you could do nothing for me, "and I still died for you?" - [Jennifer] John 13 comes back to my mind like you said. Jesus says, "Love as I loved you." - [Aaron] And you know what this sincerity and intensity, this earnestness sounds very familiar to how Jesus said we would worship God. He says this to the woman at the well, in John 4:24, he says, "God is spirit "and those who worship him must worship "in spirit and truth." Spirit and truth. And this isn't talking about worshiping each other. But it's how we love each other, in spirit and in truth. - [Jennifer] It reminds me of the definition going back earlier to those genuine feelings. - [Aaron] Mm-hmm, it's not from pretense or deceit. It's no, I genuinely love you. I may not know how to do it well, but I'm going to default to love, I'm going to default to giving you the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to love you regardless if you give me what I deserve. And then in Matthew 22 verse 37-48 says this, "And he said to him, 'You shall love the lord your God "'with all your heart and with all your soul "'and with all your mind. "'This is there greatest and first commandment. "'And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor "'as yourself, on these two commandments "'depend all the law and the prophets.'" - [Jennifer] I remember we read this verse to our kids and they got really confused, because we've taught them the 10 Commandments. - Yeah. - And they were like, "No no no, that's not the." - [Aaron] No, you have to honor your mom and dad. Like, yes. And what I explained to 'em is, and this is what Jesus says, he says, "Anyone who does these won't break any of the laws." Because when you love your neighbor, you're not gonna steal from them. When you love your neighbor, you're not gonna lie to them. When you love your neighbor, you're not gonna covet their things. You're gonna say praise God that you've given them those things, God. Praise God. They're gonna use 'em for you, I hope. We don't covet. When we love God we don't dishonor our parents. When you love your parents you're not gonna dishonor them. And so, that's the kind of love that we get to have for one another. And it's actually, it's one of the greatest commandments, to love God with all our heart, mind and soul and to love each other as ourselves. To love each other with that intensity. Okay, so we're getting up to the last part of this section of scripture and it's the most powerful one. It's actually the title of this episode. And it's the reason why Peter is commanding us to love each other in the first place. It's the reason why he's saying to do these things, it's the reason why he gave us the mindset of hey, the end of all things is at hand, be this way, love this way. So before I move on to this next portion of this scripture, I'm gonna read the whole scripture again. It's 1 Peter 4:7-11. "The end of all things is at hand, "therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded "for the sake of your prayers. "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, "since love covers a multitude of sins." Okay, so here's the-- - You slowed down there at the end Aaron, - I know it's, - [Jennifer] Is that important? - [Aaron] Well, it's the most powerful section of this scripture, I believe. And what's amazing about this is it's the opportunity that believers have to love like Christ. What did Christ's love do? - [Jennifer] Saved us. - [Aaron] It covered us. We've just been teaching the kids through Adam and Eve, the story of Adam and Eve and how they were to, God told that surely on the day that you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will die. And guess what. - [Jennifer] Well the kids asked the question, - They're like, - But they didn't die! - [Aaron] Yeah, they didn't die. Here's what's amazing is something died instead. They covered themselves with fig leaves, God covered them in skins. So an animal had to die. So even then, way back in the beginning, in the very first people, God showed his redemption plan. That he was gonna substitute the death that we deserve for another. And so it was a picture right then and there of what Christ was gonna do. And this is what the believer gets to do. This is the remarkable love that the world's gonna see and be like, whoa, those people are God's, Christ's disciples, because Christ died for them, and look how they love each other. - [Jennifer] They wouldn't be able to do it without him. - [Aaron] Yeah, and so love covers a multitude of sins. So here's a question, I taught this at church and I asked this question, and it was hard for me to get it out without crying. But I said, "Who doesn't want their sins covered?" I said, "Raise your hand." How many hands do you think went up? None. So I ask the listener, do you want your sins covered? Do you thank God that his son Jesus and the blood that he shed covers your sins completely? That you are made white as snow? That you are clean before God? Okay, so if we can answer that question with "Yes, praise God," then our love should do the same. Our love has that same power. I personally love the fact that God no longer sees my sin. I personally love that who I was before Christ is now dead and buried. But, what we often do is we highlight other people's sins. And what it does is it raises us up and puts them down. Oh so-and-so, I can't believe they would treat me that way. You can't believe it? I mean how else do we deserve to be treated, really? We deserve hell. That's what the human state deserves. - [Jennifer] There's other times in marriage that we hold their sin against them. - [Aaron] Absolutely, yeah. - [Jennifer] So, whether it's for ammunition later, or maybe you're not intentionally thinking that, but all the sudden it comes up again, and you haven't covered their sin in love. You've been hanging on to it out of bitterness and anger, and you're gonna spew it out back in their face to make them feel a certain way. - [Aaron] Or waiting for them to trip up and it makes you feel better, because as long as their sin is greater than your sin then you're not a sinner. That's like the logic we use. I know that we struggled with this. You believed because I struggled with certain things you didn't even wanna see your own sin. Things that you were dealing with, your own pride, your own bitterness, your own angers, 'cause I was the sinner in the relationship. I was the one that needed to repent, I was the one that needed to change. And I did, I mean it's not like I didn't. But we do that, we look, we long for the sin in others. Oh, since they're that way, I can be this way. Rather than wanting to cover those sins. Rather than wanting to overlook them and remind those people of who they are in Christ, without pretense, without this idea of like, I'm gonna point this out, because I wanna hurt them. Or I wanna feel better. - [Jennifer] I think just kind of glancing back over those first few years of marriage, something else that I've struggled with is holding on to the sins that you struggled with even after saying I forgive you or trying to make up and resolve things. Because I had this belief about you that you were gonna fail me. So I was building a case, right? - [Aaron] You were waiting for me to, yeah. - [Jennifer] The next time you messed up, I go, "See, this is the type of person that you are." And I held up a mirror to show you your sin instead of pointing you to God and saying, "But he's redeemed you." You know what I mean? I didn't give you-- - Why you acting like this? God's redeemed you. - I didn't give you the positive message, because I truly cared about restoration at that point I was looking for a case in order to get out. To leave, to say, "You're this way, and I can't handle it." - [Aaron] Yeah. And that leads me to this question, do we see our spouse's sins against us as special or less deserving of forgiveness and grace? Do we see the sins and shortcomings of others towards us as less deserving, as special? Yeah, yeah, I've done things, I get it, God forgives me, but what they've done? No, what they've done is not forgivable. What they've done is, you can't tell me to love that person. Well, you know what, I don't. I'm not telling you anything. God says it, okay? When you give that word picture, 'cause I think it perfectly sums up this idea of when we love the way Christ loves, what it does. - [Jennifer] Well, I was just thinking about this idea of covering a multitude of sins by our love, the word picture that I got in my mind to help me understand that is a blanket and it's function. When you think about a blanket and being wrapped up and curled up on the couch with it, it provides warmth and comfort and padding and it consumes you. - It protects you. - [Jennifer] It protects you, it's just all around you and it was a really beautiful picture for me to understand how God covers us. Kinda like even as you said, going back to Adam and Eve, how he covered them, ya know? - [Aaron] And then the picture I got, and the Bible even uses it, says that our sins are made white as snow. And we live in a place that snows. And you see all the landscape, there's all the colors, the grass, the concrete, the trees, the houses. - [Jennifer] Pretty soon everything starts to fade away. - [Aaron] It snows and guess what. Everything's the same color. - Everything's white. - Everything's white. And beautiful and it could be on the dirtiest, muddiest area, and it's a beautiful white field. And that's what Christ's blood does is it covers us. And out of our thankfulness for that, we get to love others the same way. And this isn't an overlooking of sin, this isn't a pretending sin hasn't happened. And I'll talk about that in a second. But it's the way we love that no one, no one's sin is special that doesn't deserve our forgiveness, because what we've done is so worthy of punishment. The littlest sin we've done is detrimental to our own nature. And Christ has forgiven that in us. And I was reading in Leviticus this morning, and it was talking about all of the sacrifices and all the atonements and the priest is supposed to do this and all, it was so weird, I'm reading, I was like, "I wanna watch a video on this." So I watched the Bible Project's video on atonement. - [Jennifer] Oh they're good. - [Aaron] Yeah, it was good. And I almost started crying in Starbucks, 'cause I go to Starbucks after the gym, watching it because it was explaining how the atonement was a replacement and it was talking about the two types of evil, it was the sin against your brother or God. And it washes that away. But the other thing is the broken relationship aspect. Let's say you stole something, you paid it back, right? But there's also now distrust and fear that's in the relationship. And so that has to be atoned for as well. And so there's this picture of the priest sprinkling blood over the temple and the Tent of Meeting, right? And it showed this picture of, there was all this black looking weeds on the ground, and every time the blood hit the ground it turned to normal. And it said the blood also brought us into a safe relationship and a love relationship. And that's what this love does when it's covering. It's not just pretending things didn't happen, it's actually mending relationships so that we can walk with people not in fear, not in angst or anxiety, but we can actually walk with people in freedom and in love and in purity. That's what this does. And I wanted to share that 'cause it literally almost made me cry when I was thinking what God's done for me, and how he's, he didn't just fix the offense, he also fixed the relationship that was broken because of the offense. - [Jennifer] It's remarkable. - [Aaron] Yeah. So, I just wanna quickly, we talked through a lot of the scriptures, but I wanted to quickly say, this isn't to say we ignore sin, because that actually is unloving. Ignoring someone's sin is unloving. The loving thing to do is to address the sin, not out of our own vindication, trying to get something paid back to us, but out of, like you said, pointing them back to the truth of what God said about them. Or if they're not a believer, to repentance and salvation. So the loving way to, we deal with sin lovingly. And we come to people in truth and our position is of we wanna see the best for you. We want you to be in a right relationship with us. As Matthew 18 says, it's like you've won your brother. That's what you go to them for is for the purpose of winning your brother, not for winning the argument or winning the, oh see, all I want is an apology and we'll be good. No, you're going with the intention of hey, this is broken right now. We need to fix this. Love covering a multitude of sins isn't to say that the sins just disappear. It's to say that we deal with them the biblical way, the loving way for the purpose of reconciliation, 'cause that is the ministry we've been given is reconciliation. - [Jennifer] And we do this for people because we desire the same reciprocation, right? Of love? - I want it. - [Jennifer] I want people to overlook and cover the sins that I've committed, even the slightest or smallest, there's no degree. It doesn't matter. If I'm imperfect, I want someone to love me still. And I think that's important to remember, especially in marriage. - [Aaron] So I hope that bit of scripture encourages you in your walk. As usual we pray before signing off, so we're gonna pray. Dear lord, we lift up our hearts to you right now and ask that you would make us a people who love others earnestly. Holy spirit direct our hearts and remind us of your word. We pray we would above all things, love others. We pray we would love our spouse, our children, our friends and those who are in our life. May your love pour out of us. May your love pouring out of us transform our marriages. We pray others would be impacted by the love we share. We pray we'd be able to love so deeply that it covers a multitude of sin. We pray that instead of shame or guilt, people would feel undoubtedly loved by us and by you. We pray for your word to be fulfilled through our choices to walk in love and that your will would be done. In Jesus name, amen. Hey thanks for joining us for this episode. We pray it blessed you, of course. And don't forget to join the Parenting Prayer Challenge. That's parentingprayerchallenge.com It's completely free and we pray it blesses you. See you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Yes sir, yes ma'am. I've been out in Cali for 2 weeks. Loving every minute of it. Today, it's time for some of that Latin Reggaeton Hip Hop. If you didn't know, I've been bouncing around from LA to Las Vegas, back to LA then to Oakland. Oakland is my final destination. I will be heading home tonight. Then I'm back home to New York (sung in Alicia Keyes voice!). Ya'll ready to rock with me? We're doing this via-satellite, so the whole world can get it. Let's go!!! Bazarro in the mix 00:00 - Bazarro intro 01:40 - Palitos - Tego Calderon ft. Jungle & Choco 05:14 - Despejar La Mente - Papy Jay 08:57 - Te Sone De Nuevo - Ozuna 12:13 - La Nina - Zion & Lennox & Plan B 15:24 - Yandel - Sumba Yandel 18:49 - El Tiempo Se Lo Llevo - Flex 23:04 - Bazarro Mic Break 24:10 - Pa Mala Yo - Natti Natasha 27:09 - Gitanas - Mala Rodriguez 30:14 - Selfie - De La Ghetto 33:20 - Que No Acabe - Yandel 36:38 - Pa Que Se Lo Gozen - Tego Calderon 39:05 - Bazarro Mic Break 41:00 - Moto - Spigga 45:31 - Tengo Hambre - Calle 13 49:34 - Cuidao Con El Vino - Villanosam 52:44 - Me Gustas Tu - Manu Chao 56:43 - Tu Amigo Fiel - Guelo Star 60:04 - Bazarro Mic Break 61:11 - Finish

Yes sir, yes ma'am. I've been out in Cali for 2 weeks. Loving every minute of it. Today, it's time for some of that Latin Reggaeton Hip Hop. If you didn't know, I've been bouncing around from LA to Las Vegas, back to LA then to Oakland. Oakland is my final destination. I will be heading home tonight. Then I'm back home to New York (sung in Alicia Keyes voice!). Ya'll ready to rock with me? We're doing this via-satellite, so the whole world can get it. Let's go!!! Bazarro in the mix 00:00 - Bazarro intro 01:40 - Palitos - Tego Calderon ft. Jungle & Choco 05:14 - Despejar La Mente - Papy Jay 08:57 - Te Sone De Nuevo - Ozuna 12:13 - La Nina - Zion & Lennox & Plan B 15:24 - Yandel - Sumba Yandel 18:49 - El Tiempo Se Lo Llevo - Flex 23:04 - Bazarro Mic Break 24:10 - Pa Mala Yo - Natti Natasha 27:09 - Gitanas - Mala Rodriguez 30:14 - Selfie - De La Ghetto 33:20 - Que No Acabe - Yandel 36:38 - Pa Que Se Lo Gozen - Tego Calderon 39:05 - Bazarro Mic Break 41:00 - Moto - Spigga 45:31 - Tengo Hambre - Calle 13 49:34 - Cuidao Con El Vino - Villanosam 52:44 - Me Gustas Tu - Manu Chao 56:43 - Tu Amigo Fiel - Guelo Star 60:04 - Bazarro Mic Break 61:11 - Finish

Today, for our third installment of the Creative Kickstart Challenge, we are braving new territories! I have created a creative visualization exercise that will help you SEE what your creativity looks like - as a living, breathing force of life. We will meet and explore our creativity's galaxy where it lives, grows, expands, gathers energy and ideas. Then I'm going to encourage you to put that vision onto paper - you won't get it perfect, but this will give you a visual reminder of the life force of your creativity and inspire you to keep exploring its energy each day. For this episode, you need to be in a quiet space where you can close your eyes for about 15 minutes and have a notebook with you to jot down your vision as quickly as possible. Please share your creative galaxy with me by tagging me @laurenlikesblog and using the hashtag #howshecreatescreativekickstart For the ultimate creative kickstart join me for an art retreat here: http://lauren-likes.com/retreat For full show notes visit: http://www.lauren-likes.com/how-she-creates:-creative-kickstart-challenge-#3/

Do you want to know how to get out of the friend zone? Then I'm sure you've heard this before" "You're such a nice guy, but for me you're just a good friend." Allow me to show you what it really means when a woman says this and how to become unfriendzonable. I show you how to use reverse psychology to make her want you. Do you also want to know how to seduce her once you escaped the friend zone? https://www.globalseducer.com/rise-of-the-phoenix/ Get coaching: https://www.globalseducer.com/coaching/ 

A slow start. Then I'm regretfully triggered about people not running nodes. But after that it's a pretty good episode.

Dec 30 2019: In this episode I do game recaps for the Jets, Lightning and Panthers games. Then I'm joined by Jason Paul from The Hockey Writers and Waveintel.org to talk about Ben Chiarot (52:16)

Nate Woodbury has had his online business for a decade now, and it's going great. But are there things he could've done to speed things up? In today's podcast, he talks about what he would do and what he'd avoid if he were to start all over again, as well as share other lessons he's learned over years of experience. Stay tuned! Would you like to know what I do if I had to start my business from scratch? I've had my business for 10 years now and I'm in a pretty good place. And I feel I've learned a lot because I've made a ton of mistakes. Well in this video, I'm going to break it down in just a few minutes of exactly what I do if I went back and did it all over again so that I could get here a lot faster. Okay, right at the beginning I want to say, I would do the same thing that I've done. Now, I it took me 10 years to get to this point. So, there's some things that I would be able to skip. And so what I'm going to do is, first of all, tell you exactly what I've created because I would make sure I would create the exact same thing. Then I'm going to share with you some of the things that I did that I would make sure to not do if I were do to do this all over again. Kind of like the mistakes that I would avoid if I were you. So, is that fair enough? So, let me start with... What I've created is I have a company that provides a service that other people fulfill for me. And that... That's pretty cool. And that is pretty huge So, if I can explain what I mean there, people hire me to produce their YouTube channels. But I don't produce them. I'm the strategy guy and I put in some time towards the channel. But the majority of the time, although long hours are put in by my filming team, my editing team, my YouTube team, my design team, thumbnail team, they do all the work. And that is so awesome. Because I can just go out and speak and people want to hire me. They say "How do I work with you?" They pay me and I hook them up with my team. So, I want to go step by step and let you know how I created this, okay? Because the goal is you want to be able to have a service that you can sell for a very high price. And yet have someone else fulfill on it. My recommendation and where I found success is that in order to charge a high price, you've got to deliver extremely high value. If people are going to pay me 6 figures to produce their YouTube channel for a year, they better get seven figures of results, okay? Now, this is a topic for another conversation. But know that I do get those results for my clients. But it takes 12 to 24 months to get to that point. So, they're making a big investment. They're getting a much bigger return. You've got to have that same thing. You can't just provide a service that doesn't lead them to getting more value than what they're paying for it. Okay, here's the next step. Give away your service for free in the beginning. Like seriously. That's crazy, right? I couldn't give away my service because I didn't have a track record. I had proven my strategy in small scale. And now, I wanted to take it full-scale, large scale and produce a whole YouTube channel with this focus on this strategy. And I could not even sell my service at cost where I wouldn't get... Wasn't going to make any profit at all, I couldn't sell it. So, I approached a few people and I said, "I will give you my service for free. We'll be partners on this channel. We'll share future profits." I had one person take me up first. And we started producing that channel. And today, that channel is bringing in $600,000 per month. I now have a track record of success, don't I? I went 2 and a half years without making a dime on this channel. 2 and a half years. A lot of work. And I just believed in the future. I believed in my strategy so much. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to do what it takes to give yourself some credibility? To give yourself a track record? Once you have a track record, you've been doing all this work for free up to this point, right? But once you have a track record, people will now hire you. And you can charge what your services worth and you can hire other people to do that work. That's what I've done. I've hired other people to do the filming, to do the editing of this service that really has a huge track record and will really get them great results. So, to say that another way, I still provide the expertise but my team puts in the long hours and my client, they get the results. Okay, so what lessons have I learned? What mistakes have I made along this 10-year journey? I would avoid business loans. See, I got a loan because I thought, "Well, I've got a successful company" at a point right I had this financial rollercoaster and I was at one of these points of somewhat success. And I thought, "I just need to put money into marketing now." So, I got a significant loan --business loan and I put it all into marketing and it didn't result in anything. And so now, I had a big chunk of debt. And so, I would say don't do that. Don't go into debt for marketing. See, I didn't have a sales funnel. Yeah, if I would have done some marketing and put that traffic into a sales funnel that was working but I didn't have anything like that in place. Everything I was doing was manual. And nothing that that was really automated or scalable through advertising or marketing. Another thing that held me back from becoming successful or financially stable a lot sooner is this thermostat. I had this financial thermostat that I could not break through. Like even though I had the potential or I had the ideas or I had the sales numbers or the leads coming in, right here was comfortable. And if I started making more revenue than that, I would just relax. The stress was gone and so I'd ease off and then it would this temperature would settle back down. But if it started getting down here, I started getting uncomfortable again. So, I'd kick it into gear, I'd make more phone calls, I'd put on a different event. And I'd get sales coming up to here. And so, I stated that same financial thermostat for years. And so, if I were to go back, I would find a way to break through that financial thermostat. I mean, I'm in a different mental place now. I have 10 times my income from that point. And I've got big plans of where I'm going from here. I'm hoping that there's a lesson in there for you that you can apply to find out. Do whatever you can to break through any financial thermostat like that. Okay, a third big mistake that I made is early on, I put all my energy into these free channels that I created for a couple of my clients. And I didn't even create the Nate Woodbury channel. I mean it existed but I wasn't doing the same things on my channel that I was doing for my clients. So, it's not that I wasn't practicing what I preach because I was doing it. I was producing all these channels and I was following all my rules on my clients channels. But I didn't follow the rules. I didn't produce regular content on my own channel for several years. And that's a big mistake. I wish I would have done that. I'm obviously doing it now. And I'm in a really good place. I'm not complaining but that is one thing that is a mistake that I would definitely go back and start from the beginning. Now, some of the things that I've shared in this video relate to another video that I recommend that you watch. It's how to start a video editing business. And so that's the video that I recommend that you watch next. I'll put it on the screen.

How long should your YouTube videos really be? Some say the shorter the better, while others say having longer videos will get more people's attention. In this podcast, Nate Woodbury shares his take on the matter. Stay tuned to find out how you can get people to watch your YouTube videos all the way to the end! Welcome back. How do you make your videos longer on YouTube? Right? And why do we want to make them longer? Because we've been told shorter is better. But you're going to learn some things why you want them to be longer. How long and how you can do that. How you can come up with the content so that your videos are exciting for that length of time. The quick answer is 10 to 12 minutes. You want your videos to be 10 to 12 minutes long. So we're first going to talk about why that is. Why 10 to 12 minutes? Then we're going to talk about your gold, your secrets. How much of your secret should you share, and is there anything that you should hold back? Then I'm going to introduce a way that you can actually simplify your process. Make it really really easy to narrow down your content but also make sure that it's 10 to 12 minutes in length. We're going to talk about repetition when it's bad and when it's good. We're going to talk about stories, and then we're also going to talk about having multiple tripods. Now, what do I mean by that? Wait a minute. What just happened? Okay, that was weird. We're going to talk about why we use multiple tripods. And we'll wrap up the videos talking about tightening up your video. How to actually shorten it to make sure that it's really good but yet still long enough. So, why 10 to 12 minutes? YouTube recommends between 7 and 16. I like 10 to 12. 10 to 12 is kind of the good round number that people are expecting. That's the experience that a lot of consumers of YouTube videos have. Most channels kind of hone in on that. And here's some logic behind that: YouTube posts a new ad every 10 minutes. So, the longer you can keep people on YouTube, the more ads will be able to show to them. And YouTube wants to make money. The cool thing is they pay half that revenue to us. That's a topic for another conversation. Like I'll link that up here how to make money on YouTube. But that's one of the main reasons why to have your videos that long as you want good watch time. The more watch time you have, the better your channel will perform. Now, the other reason for going 10 to 12 minutes - and this is a huge one. That's how long it really takes to build a connection and cover most topics thoroughly. Now, the next point I want to cover is, do you give away your gold or how much you share. You know what? I'm going to say it right now. Give away everything. Give them your gold. Now, how can you do that in a 10- or 12-minute episode, right? Because all this knowledge, all this experience; how can you just give them everything? Well, you narrow it down to a very very niche Pacific topic. So, let me give you an example. Paul Jenkins, he makes a lot of videos on parenting. But we did keyword research, and we found questions like "How to get kids to listen without yelling?" Or "How to get kids to go to bed on time?" You know those are so specific. And if Paul were just to make videos on parenting and how to be a better parent, it's like how do you narrow that down, right? And how do you get specific enough? You could just talk and talk and talk and yet not be focused on anything. But if the title of our video is "How to get kids to listen without yelling?" Imagine having just focused 10 minutes of content on that exact question. That's going to be a really valuable video. But now you're probably asking yourself, "Well, wait. If I give away everything..." Right? You're just giving it in these 10- or 12-minute chunks. But if you're just sharing all your secrets on YouTube, are people still gonna hire you? Are they still going to want to buy your courses or go through your programs? And the answer is absolutely. The more you give away on YouTube, the more value they will get, right? The more that they will value you and like and trust you, in their mind, they're going to think, "Wow. This channel is so valuable, and he's giving me all this for free. I can only imagine what his course is going to be like or what her course or her program or her event is going to be like." Here's the other reality: You can give them everything on YouTube, but a very small fraction of a fraction of a fraction are actually going to implement it. They're just internalizing it. They're just opening their minds to it. They're kind of having this paradigm shift of recognizing, "I could do this." When they're ready to take action, that's when they click the link and go to your website and find out how to work with you. They don't want to do it themselves. Now that they understand this, they see the value in it. Now they want to hire you. Now, you're going to deliver the same content but packaged quite differently. It's not going to be packaged in 10-minute episodes that answer their specific questions. On YouTube, each episode you're answering a specific question. In a course, you're going to take them sequentially through your content. You're going to give them assignments. They're going to be taking action. And here's the other interesting part: YouTube, they didn't pay money for. So, there's nothing holding them accountable. There's no exchange of value, right? They haven't committed themselves to anything. But if they pay a couple thousand dollars for your course, now they're committed. They're going to implement it, right? They're going to take action. They're going to take it more seriously. They're going to start to act on this knowledge that they get from you. Now, can you be repetitive? Is there a time and place to be redundant or just repeat your content or give it a summary? And the answer is definitely yes, and definitely no. Within the same episode, you do not want to be redundant. You do not want to go back and summarize and review everything that you've talked about in the video. Why not? Because people will leave. Okay? If they feel like, "Oh, I've gotten everything that's been trained." In this video, the remaining 5 minutes or 3 minutes is just a summary, just a review. They'll leave and go to the next video. Or they'll leave and walk away. So, as a default rule, never do a summary at the end of your video. And if you run out of content, just end the video there. Don't get repetitive or redundant. If you want to keep people on the video longer, then share another story. Stories are always good. Stories are fun. Stories are entertaining, and it takes the information that you've shared and makes it applicable. Here's what you can do, though, from episode 1 to episode 5 or episode 15. You can repeat the same principles. You can teach the same content. You can have a lot of content overlap. In fact, that's a good idea. Because people that are watching all of your videos will really learn those principles from lots of different angles. Most of the people who are watching these videos haven't seen the other ones. They're being brought to you from YouTube. They've never heard of you before. They're watching a brand new video. So you don't have to be hesitant about them seeing something in a previous episode. They probably haven't. Now, to talk about stories a little bit more, a story can definitely help make your video longer. But it makes the video better. Here's an example. Here's a story that I can share about a video that we made that's 20 minutes long. First I filmed a video with Kris Krohn called "How to invest your money in your 2o's" It's about a six-minute video. We made this a few years ago. The video got up to about 60,000 views, and when I looked in the analytics, I saw that most of these views came from suggested views. That means YouTube was suggesting our video to other viewers to watch after the previous video. When you see stuff like that, you notice that there's an opportunity. And so Kris and I decided to do a second video with that same title, it's called a sequel. But we wanted to make it better. We wanted to make it longer. So, in addition to telling the same story, Kris thought of other things that he could share to make the content a little bit longer. I also filmed it in another way. Instead of just sitting still on his pool table where it was in the first video, we decided to walk around and have the intro start differently. So, I had him pull up in his BMW i8. The wing door went up. He climbed out, and I followed him with my glide cam. So, he's talking as he's walking into his house he's kind of explaining things as he's going and pointing out things as cleaning lady happy to be vacuuming. We weren't planning on the video being 20 minutes, but that's how long the video was. And it actually has a really high retention rate. People are watching a lot of that video. Because YouTube likes long watched time, this video is done really really well. it's had over 5 million views. Now, you notice I was just sitting, but now I'm standing. I'm looking into the same camera. But I've got a tripod set up right here pointed at a chair over there. So, I'm just moving the camera back and forth from one tripod to the next so that we go from location 1, location 2, location 1, location 2. That mixes things up. It gives variety, and it keeps people's attention. When I prepare the outline of my content, I'll prepare it in bullet points so it allows me to make the move back and forth really easy. That's another great strategy for making your content long enough. Now, right now, when I look at the time on my camera, it says that I've been recording for about 16 minutes. I've actually been seeing a lot of ahm's and ah's. I've been doing a lot of restarts. You haven't heard those things because my editing team does a really good job of tightening it up. So what I mean by tightening it up is they'll edit out the pauses they'll edit out those ahm's, and they'll edit out the restarts. And sometimes, they'll do a zoom edit or a crop edit like this. So, see now I'm a lot closer to you. And if I were to make a mistake, okay. Watch this. I'm going to do a little test. I'm gonna say a sentence with the word elephant in it. But I'm gonna have my editing team edit out that word but do a crop edit so that you don't know that that word is even missing. Some of my favorite animals are tigers, leopards, zebras. There's lots of other animals that I like. Now, for my editing team, they followed my instructions there. Then you didn't hear me say the word elephant. But when I recorded this, I said elephant in the middle of those animals that I listed. The reason that you didn't really notice that there was a word missing is because they changed the zoom. So, do things like that to tighten up your video. And we've been talking about how to make your videos longer, but you've got to keep their attention. So take out that "ahm's" and "ahh's." Take out the pauses. Take out the restarts so that your video moves along as quick. Use two tripods to keep their attention. That way, you can keep people watching all the way to the end of your ten- to twelve-minute video. Now, they have a good foundation on how to make your videos longer. You definitely need to watch my leaf strategy video. This is the pivotal way to get people to find your videos. These are people that have never heard of you before. Just by following this simple strategy, they're going to be able to find your videos. And now you know how to keep them watching all the way until the end.

What topics should you cover on your YouTube channel? It's an easy answer, but it's one that requires some thinking and planning. In today's episode, Nate Woodbury talks about what topics you should include on our YouTube videos, as well as what we need to keep in mind before filming. Stay tuned to learn more! You've got a lot of energy and excitement now. You've heard about YouTube. You've seen what's possible and so you want to make a YouTube channel. What topics should I film on? On this video, I'm going to share with you a great strategy that will choose topics for you that ensure that you get the best results. YouTube provides an amazing opportunity to showcase your expertise. I mean seriously, all around the world right now there are thousands of people searching for you. Except they don't knew you exist. So, what I mean is they're searching for your expertise. Right? They want to know. They need help. You can answer questions. You can help them. But there's just this disconnect. You've got this problem of obscurity. So YouTube provides a good opportunity. Because you can answer their questions, put these videos on YouTube, and now these people that are searching for you find you. Right? They see you as the hero in that moment. You've provided them help. You've given them advice. You've answered their questions. So, that's the answer. How do you know what to make videos about? Well, what expertise do you have? And what questions are people asking? So, the rest of this video, I'm going to be sharing three things. I'm going to talk about first of all, length. How long should your videos be? Then I'm going to talking about these questions. How do you find these questions that people are asking online? So you know what to title your videos. And then I'm going to talk about what this does for the algorithm. So when you make videos like this, how does YouTube use that to help you and help your channel grow. Your videos need to be 10 to 12 minutes in length. Is that surprising? You've probably heard people say, "Oh, you got to keep your video short. The shorter, the better." You know, maximum 2 minutes. Maybe two and a half, maybe 3 minutes?" When you watch a super bowl commercial, 30 seconds, right? They've got to pack the whole bunch into a short amount of time. Why is that? Why they need to be so short? Well, it's a promotional video. It's a commercial. We know that we're being given a sales pitch, right? We don't want to pay too much attention to that. They've got to make it really entertaining and deliver whole bunch of information. Psychologically give us all excited and whatnot in a short amount of time. We're not going to sit there for a 10-minute commercial on something that doesn't really imply to us, right? However, we're not talking about commercials. We're talking about making how-to content. Content that people are searching for contents that are going to change their lives. On YouTube, people are really accustomed and expect videos to be on the 10 to 12-minute range. The more specific the topic is, it actually makes it easier to make your videos in that 10 to 12-minute range. Let me just give you an example. My friend Katie Gutierrez, she's an interior designer, and she could talk a lot of interior designs. So, if we go out into one of our categories, let's say, "living room design," she could probably talk about living room design for an hour if we wanted to narrow it down and make it to 10 to 12-minute episode. She could easily do that. But like how to make it really valuable? She could say, "Well, what are my top tips?" Okay, I'll make a top tip video. I'll share my top 5 tips." And right then we film and we go from there. But what if we did keyword research, and we found the phrase, "How to design a living room with a corner fireplace?" Oh! Then all of a sudden, she got great ideas. "Well, yeah, if you got a corner fireplace, you've got to do this..." And I have no idea what the answer to this. But "You got to make sure that you balance it out with a nice rock feature or fountain, or then you got to put your couch here, and you got to make sure that the lighting does this. And that your artwork, you got to have different colors." Whatever it is, if there's a specific scenario, I know that Katie's minor goal right to work to know exactly what to do. Does that make sense? And because you're narrowing it down, I mean you're cutting away all of the extra stuff that isn't relevant to this specific answer, and yet, you can go deep. And I've found that 10 to 12-minute range or video like this is perfect. If you get to like to 5 or 7-minute mark and you think, "I'm done. I can't think of anything else to share." Well, then, definitely stop your video there. You don't just want to ramble on. If you just repeat or if you just summarize what you've already covered, people are going to leave anyway. So, you might as well not do the remaining several minutes. What about longer than 12 minutes? Yeah, you can longer. If you're keeping people's attention, go ahead and keep going. Just know that if you make a video that's like 30 minutes long, that's kind of a turn of for some people to click on the video. They're like, "Ooh! This is perfect. Oh, wait, this is 30 minutes?" Does that make sense? You got to be careful with that as well. The biggest secret I share and why people pay me a thousand dollars per hour for consulting time is to teach them this principle of keyword research before filming. Yeah, that's it. You got to do your keyword research before you hit record on your camera. Before you plan your content, do that keyword research first. It actually take a load off of your shoulders because you know of a huge variety of topics. You're not going to run out of information. You can get way more specific and targeted and feel like your talking to just one person. Because you don't want to talk to everybody and like, "Hey, everybody! Thanks for watching this video. I'm going to share some general advice, and hopefully, it applies to you." You can talk to just one person. The person that's got that corner fireplace or that person who's strep throat and wants a remedy without antibiotics, right? Now here's another amazing thing that this does. It eliminates all the competition. Because all your competition is going after the broad category. They want the most traffic. They want to rank and beat everybody. Challenges, when you make a video like that, there's hundreds of other videos out there like that, and you can't compete. I mean maybe if your Steven Spielberg, you can do that and you can make a cinema production quality. And yours will be the best. You know what? Just do keyword research. Find a question, answer that question. And you'll rank instantly. Here's why this works. The YouTube algorithm likes good engagement and likes a long average duration or a long retention rate. Okay? So, if you have a really specific video, such as how to design a living room with a corner fireplace, the people that are searching for that and they find your video, they're going to watch it all the way to the end, right? Because that's exactly for them. Why would they only watch a part of it? They have that question. They're going to watch it all the way to the end. And the algorithm sees that and says, "Wow, I know that only 50 people have watched this video this month, but all those 50 people watched it all the way to the end. Let's find 0 more or 200 more people like these 50." So YouTube starts to show your video to new audiences. And not only do you get the next 50 the next month. But you're also starting to get other views from YouTube suggesting it and promoting your content. Isn't that awesome? By just doing keyword research before filming, you're really laying a solid foundation of having a channel that the YouTube algorithm likes. And it'll find more and more people that are good match for your videos. Now that you understand this strategy of what to talk about on your YouTube videos, you definitely need to learn how to do this research. The good news is I've made a video all about that specific part. It's my leaf strategy video. You'll find it linked right there. In that video, I talk about how to do that keyword research. It's actually really simple. There's a tool that I show you how to use where you can type in category, and it will pull up all the questions the people are asking. You basically just pick these questions and say, "Oh, that will make a good title. Oh, that's a good title." You just plan out all of your videos.

There are conflicting recommendations on how often we should post videos on YouTube to achieve great results. In this podcast, Nate Woodbury shares his insights on this whole debacle and gives useful advice on how you can optimize your channel in order to earn seven figures. Check this out! There's a lot of talk right now on YouTube about how often you should upload. Some people say daily. Some people say, "You don't need to do that anymore. Only one episode per week." I've got a formula that works every single time, and if you follow the four ingredients, you will get a spike. And one of the ingredients relates to how often you need to post. If you really want to get the best results on YouTube, then frequency does matter. I'm going to cover several things in this episode. First, I'm going to address a myth. Now, a good friend of mine, Tim Schmoyer, his channel is doing extremely well. He coaches a lot of clients that have seen a great amount of success. Tim recently interviewed an employee of YouTube. I'll link to that video right here. And in this interview, the employee told Tim. "Yeah, you don't need to worry about daily. Don't stress about it. Just post one video per week." I'm going to share why that may not apply to you. Then I'm going to dive into the different types of content that you can create for YouTube and how that plays into how often you should post. I'm even even go into detail on how you can be more efficient. So, if you do want to do daily content, how you can do that just filming one day per month. There are advantages to channels that post just one episode per week. But there's some other huge advantages for posting five or more episodes a week. And I'm going to share a four-ingredient formula that will cause you to have a spike on your channel. It works every time. And then in the wrap up this video sharing a strategy where you can get guaranteed traffic from YouTube's search. So, I'm going to talk about how you can make sure you're getting traffic to your videos from search. So, if you haven't seen that video where Tim interviewed that YouTube employee, go ahead and click that now or watch that after this video. I just want to provide some feedback on that. So, anytime somebody who's an employee of a company or somebody who's an academic but they've actually never built their own YouTube channel, you got to really be leery of the advice that they give. Now, being an employee of YouTube, you think that maybe he knows an insider secret. The point that I would take has actually really enjoyed the video. I thought it was helpful. I just didn't necessarily agree with it. The point that I really got out of it is that if doing more than one episode per week is going to stress you out and ruin your life, then don't worry about it. Just do one episode per week. And you can benefit. You can get some good results by just posting one episode per week. But we've tested it. We've tried it. There's a lot of channels that have tested different amounts of frequency and we've found that there's some huge advantages if you post five or more episodes per week. Going from one episode to 2 episodes a week, you do see a little bit of improvement. 2 to 3, a little bit, 3 to 4 a little bit. But it's less noticeable 4 to 5, Wow! 4 to 5 the difference of 4 episodes a week to 5 makes a drastic difference. That's when you can get to a point where instead of just gradual growth, you can experience exponential growth. YouTube starts to promote you in a big big way. So, how do you reconcile a contradictory advice? One person tells you, "Hey, I just posted one episode per week and look at me, I'm making millions." And another person says to you, "Hey, look at me. We post 5 or 7 episodes a week and we're making millions." How do you reconcile that? How do you know what is best for you? Well, look at the different types of channels. What type of content are they creating? Or is that the type of content that you're going to be creating? What does their work schedule like? How long does it take them to create that content? They're just posting one episode per week. Are they working a whole week to create that one episode? And so, it's more like Hollywood quality type videos, and they're just doing one episode per week? Are they vlogging? I mean, if they're doing a daily vlog, are they working all day long? The type of videos that I create, we film 20 to 30 episodes in a single day. That means we can launch the content out all month long and yet we only filmed one day per month. Yeah, we're producing daily content. So, do a comparison between the type of videos you're going to be creating and who these people are they're giving you advice. And magic... Like, okay, well, I want to get this result. I want to follow the same steps that that person followed. If they're doing it differently, then it's not a really good comparison. I mean, that really is a good way to pick your strategy is to find other YouTube channels and look at the different types of content and figure out what type of content do I want to create. Do I want to just tell stories of my daily activities? Right? Do I just blog about fun adventures that I go on? That means I'm putting a lot of work into filming all throughout my damn editing all through the night. And I'm posting these cool adventures telling a story and creating entertainment, right? Or do I want to do product reviews? Or do I want to teach people? Do I want to put content out there that develops leads for my business? Now, if you're looking at YouTube is a way to market your business and get leads for your business, there's actually a huge opportunity of just creating how-to type content. Just answering people's questions. That will get you huge results. People are searching for you. They just don't know that you exist. Now, my biggest channel like this is the Kris Krohn channel. And I have permission to share all the stats about it. Okay, that channel is bringing in between 5 and 6 hundred thousand dollars every single month, and all we do is make how-to videos. Right? We film 20 plus episodes in a day. We film once every few weeks because we're posting seven episodes per week on that channel. And we're generating thousands and thousands of leads. And the ad revenue is actually icing on the cake. We're making five figures monthly just in ad revenue. Now, I produce 13 different YouTube channels right now. And I've got a pretty good track record. And I follow a formula. Would you like to know the four ingredients to make your channel go from gradual growth to exponential growth? Alright. So, here's the ingredients. You got to do keyword research before filming. Your videos need to average 10 to 12 minutes in length. Your videos need to have an average view duration of 45% or higher. The higher, the better. And you need to post at least five episodes per week. I've seen when people follow this strategy and left out this ingredient or left out that ingredient, one of the ingredients is missing. This doesn't work. You've got to have all four ingredients. And every time that I've seen that somebody had all 4 of those ingredients, they've done exponential growth on their channel. Now, let me give you some gold here, okay? If that wasn't gold enough that secret formula, I have another secret to share with you that will make getting videos that have those four ingredients easier. So, it'll make it easy to have longer video length on your videos. It will make it easier to come up with more topics, so you never run out of topics. We'll also make it so that you'll get an instant source of traffic from people who've never heard of you before but that are interested in your topic. And that's keyword research. Keyword research makes this easy. When you do keyword research, it opens up a whole world of all these hundreds and hundreds of questions that people are asking, so you never run out of topics to talk about. And because people are finding exactly what they're searching for, such as "How to design a living room with a corner fireplace?", Yeah, that's so specific people that search for it, they find it, they watch it all the way to the end because it applies specifically to them. There is your retention rate. There's your 10 to 12 minutes watch time. Because I did that keyword research first when I post that video, it ranks on the top of YouTube for that phrase, and I'm getting an instant source of traffic. When you follow this approach, the YouTube algorithm sees how well your video is performing. Even though it might just be a handful of views that come to your video at first, YouTube sees while they're watching it all the way to the end, they engage, they comment. They like this video. They subscribe to this channel. So YouTube will then go to work to find other people that are similar to these first group of people. And will start to promote your video to this new group. Now that you have a little bit more information about how frequent you should post your videos, the next video should watch is my leaf strategy video. I'll link to it right up there. I go in more depth on the keyword research process and how to find those questions. If you're an expert, this is definitely the strategy that I recommend to make seven figures on YouTube.

How did David Bain turn his podcast content into a book? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Marketing Now author David Bain talks about how he went from podcasting to livestreaming to publishing a book - and how any marketer can repurpose audio content into electronic and printed books. Highlights from my conversation with David include: David started podcasting all the way back in 2006. His first attempt at repurposing audio content was to publish transcripts and compile them together. When he did that, he realized that transcripts don't work well for creating longer form content that people want to read. If you're thinking of creating audio content, quality audio is key. David recommends purchasing an ATR 2100 mic. You can also add professionally recorded intros and outros. David uses an iPad app called Boss Jock to edit his audio. After David got more serious about his audio content, he began pre-recording video using hangouts. From there, he moved on to live streaming. In 2015, he recorded a year end episode for his podcast that featured 20 to 30 marketers giving tips. The next year, he decided to feature 100 marketers and make a book out of their advice. David has worked with both Kindle Direct Publishing and Ingram Spark to produce ebooks and physical books out of his repurposed content. Resources from this episode: Visit the Marketing Now book microsite  Connect with David on LinkedIn Follow David on Twitter Listen to the podcast to learn how to repurpose podcast content into a book - and what that can do for your marketing results. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth, and I'm your host. This week, my guest is David Bain, who is an author with the book, "Marketing Now", coming out any day now, and also a prolific podcaster. Welcome, David. David Bain (Guest): Hey, Kathleen. Great to be on with you. Thanks for asking me. David and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you, because you have quite a bit of experience with podcasting. You're also a marketer by trade, who has held various marketing roles. But, it seems like recently your focus has really been on the medium of podcasting, and now turning what you've done with podcasting into a book. Maybe we could start out and just you could tell your story, your background, what you've been doing, kind of led to you where you are now, and what you're doing now? About David Bain David: Sure. I've come to realize recently that's impossible to do everything in the world of marketing. It used to be possible, I reckon, maybe about five to 10 years ago when you're talking about marketing or maybe digital marketing, to say that you're a marketer or you're a digital marketer, and people would understand that you do a broad variety of different things, but all under the marketing umbrella. Nowadays, it's just so much involved, I think you have to specialize a bit. I guess I'm specializing a bit in podcasting and live streaming, and turning that into a book, as you say. I've been involved, I guess, in marketing for about 15 years or so. It was about 2004 that I really started to realize that I could publish webpages and do things like Google Ad Sense onto the pages, and start to make some decent money out of doing that. That's how I got started in marketing experience. Within a year or so, people were asking me, "How on earth do you actually do that?" So, I was helping a few people to do that, and I ended up building that into a few digital marketing courses, and discovering podcasting about the same time. I actually launched my first podcast way back in 2006. Kathleen: Wow, that's really early days for podcasting. David: It is, it is. It's a year or so after iTunes introduced podcasts. Prior to that, I guess you could do it with RSS feeds, but it was becoming really technical, and there wasn't much of an audience out there. It was really iTunes that brought it into the mainstream. Kathleen: That's amazing. I mean, that's so early on. How did you decide to do a podcast at that point? David: I think I had an iPod, or maybe a device that could listen to it, or at least I was able to download iTunes onto a computer and then discovered podcasts through there, I think, and then thought, "Wow, this could be an incredible medium for marketing, or for actually broadcasting content and distributing content." I had a website at the time, that was a fairly generic business article's website, because at the time when you're involved with SEO, then if you wanted a webpage to be ranked fairly highly, then all you had to do was submit an article to a third party article's directory, and have yourself an author bio at the bottom that had a keyword-rich link back to your website. That could fairly quickly rank it highly. I thought, "Okay, I'll get into this article's game by having an article's website." So, I had a business article's website. The first podcast was actually reading articles in audio form that people had submitted to me. Kathleen: So, you were like Audible before Audible. That is so interesting. David: Well, maybe a very, very small version of that. Kathleen: Yeah, wow. Fascinating. It's changed so much over the years too, really. It's gotten so much more sophisticated in terms of the delivery mechanisms, and the people that are participating, and the formats, et cetera. David: It's absolutely crazy. Back then, you're only talking about 30 years go. We're obviously recording this in 2019, but it's night and day in terms of quality and technology that's available to you, but also people's Internet connections, and devices. There's just so many things that have happened over the last few years or so. From podcasting to publishing a book Kathleen: Yeah, it's amazing. Now, your latest kind of adventure is taking some of what you've done with podcasting and turning it into a book, correct? David: Yes, it is indeed. I think podcasting lends itself quite nicely to either producing transcripts, or making the content available to people in other means. What I tried to do initially was produce some transcripts of the show and publish that. I came to realize fairly quickly, that actually people don't love to read transcripts, books, articles, whenever people write anything. It's an entirely different form compared with the way they actually say something. What I ended up doing was transcribing a series of live streams initially, and then taking the transcripts and completely rewriting them, to be honest with you, to make them into a readable form for our book. It's a whole lot of work to do that. I figured out that actually, I had to have an eight hour live stream to produce roughly 60,000 words of transcripts, and that is an average size of a 250 page book resource, or an average book basically. But in order to actually get the book in really nice readable form, you have to rewrite it. So, it's as much work, if not more work, than actually writing a book from scratch. Kathleen: You know, this is actually a really interesting topic to me, because I have show notes, and my show notes include an executive summary, if you will, but then I include the full transcript. Part of the reason I do that is also just for accessibility, anybody who is hearing impaired and wants to be able to read it. There's also an SEO benefit to having all of that copy and keyword-rich stuff on the page, but I will say that it's interesting when you look at a transcript. I really read mine, and I go through and I don't really heavily edit it, but I just sort of clean it up a little bit, and I add some headings to make it a little bit more digestible. I'll add some links in here and there. One thing I've learned from doing that, is you're absolutely right when you say that people speak differently than they write, and also than they want to read. I have learned that I start pretty much every sentence with "Yeah." David: I know, it's horrible, isn't it? Kathleen: From reading my own transcripts. David: When you edit everything. Kathleen: It's horrifying. I have now this conscious effort I need to make to not say the word, "Yeah" at the beginning of a sentence, and I'll probably do it 20 times on this podcast now that I've said it. I've had a few guests who have, for reasons connected with how they manage their personal brands, who've wanted to go back and edit the transcript and make it sound like it was something that was written as opposed to said. It totally turns it into something different. I've actually had some debates. With one of my guests in particular, I had a real debate about this because I was like, "It's a transcript. It's there for people who can't listen to the podcast, and want an accurate representation of it. So, we can't just completely change it." But I like what you're talking about, because that's really taking it to a different medium, where you don't have to preserve the integrity of the transcript. You can turn it into something that captures the spirit of it, but is much more elegantly written, if you will. David: Definitely. There were so many things you were sharing there, Kathleen, that we could probably have a full conversation about. When you were talking initially about the fact that obviously transcripts themselves have to be turned entirely into something completely different. What I find is actually the guests, as you've to a certain degree alluded to, actually prefer the written form when that form is representing them. I've reached out to every single person that have participated in the production of a live stream, and they've been completely happy. So, I've done it with the approval of other people as well. But you're also talking about SEO, and an SEO benefit as well. I believe that although Google, because it's probably the most important search engine for the majority of us listening, although it is looking for text to crawl, it's increasingly becoming better at being able to look into audio and see what people are saying, and looking through videos and seeing what the video is about as well. It's not perfect yet, but we're getting to a stage where Google is going to be able to transcribe audio without the written text being there. To a certain degree, the SEO value of producing a transcript, I think next to a podcast, is going to diminish over time. Then the question is, why are you doing that? Are you doing it really for people to view? I've probably been a little bit lazy in the past, of not wanting to do podcast transcripts beside every single episode. Have you actually had many people ask you specifically for transcripts? Or are you doing it because you feel it's great as an inclusive thing to do for all of your audience? Kathleen: It's really more of the latter. Philosophically, I like the idea of making the content accessible regardless of someone's ability to consume it in a certain format. I've philosophically chosen to include transcripts for that reason, but I will say that it's interesting, I publish my show notes on IMPACT's website, which has a lot of traffic. There are several podcasts on that website, and I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that my show notes get more views than most of the other podcast show notes. So, I do have a theory that from an SEO standpoint, there's something there. But again, it's not just a straight transcript. Like I said, I put some H2s in to chunk out the sections, help kind of make it easier to digest. There's also a section at the beginning that if you don't want to read through a whole transcript. You can just look at that. It's been an evolving experiment, honestly. David: I think that's a lovely tip, actually, putting H2s in there, because Google is looking for ways to break down the tanks on a webpage. If you're demonstrating that actually it's more than a transcript to a certain degree, that is what you're greeting because you're editing it so much, and you're ensuring that it's correct, and you're making it as easy as possible for the reader to consume it. I guess those simple things like H2s and perhaps some other small elements that you can bring in like list elements, maybe, if someone's referring to a list as well, would make it much more likely for search engines to treat that text positively. Kathleen: Yeah, it's a labor of love. Quite honestly, I'm not sure if you just made an ROI calculation, if I could prove that there was the ROI and the amount of time I spend. But it's interesting. It's just sort of the direction I've been going lately. Getting started with audio content Kathleen: I feel like we could have a whole conversation about that. But back to yours. Let's actually rewind for a minute. Can you talk a little bit about the podcasting or the live streaming that you were doing, that led to this notion to create a book? David: Sure. Sorry, I can't help asking questions. It's the podcast career in me. Kathleen: No, it's great. I love it. David: I love having a conversation. Kathleen: This is a good conversation. David: I believe that when I see other people live streaming, or producing lots of video content that they get some of the basics wrong, such as decent quality audio. I'm a strong believer that people should start off with a basic quality audio podcast to begin with, and that if they do that, if they have a piece of equipment like... Sorry, I'm talking a microphone that I'm using at the moment actually, but this ATR 2100, I wanted to refer to. The microphone that I'm using is an Electro Voice RE20, which is a more professional microphone. The microphone that I was wanting to refer to was the ATR 2100. The ATR 2100 is a very basic dynamic microphone that you connect to a computer using a USB. It's got a more professional connection cord, an XLR as well, but you don't need to worry about that. If you have a basic microphone like that connected to your computer, you connect with someone using Skype, and you record using a free piece of software that you can connect to Skype. That's all you need to begin with. Then you record 20 or so episodes to begin with, and you get comfortable with producing your audio podcast, and then you move on to video after that. I would encourage anyone that is looking to do live streaming, produce video, is to really think about your audio quality to begin with because certainly when it comes to YouTube, many people consume YouTube videos by walking around the house and occasionally referring to the screen. They're actually out for the decent audio quality content, and they're more likely to skip your video if you're difficult to hear, or you're just not good enough quality. Kathleen: Yeah, I think that's so true. I mean, I have a Blue Yeti microphone, which is, I would say, kind of comparable to the ATR, around the same price range, and easy to connect. You don't need to be any kind of an expert to use it, and don't have to spend a lot of money. It makes a huge difference. To that, I would add, having a really good Internet connection because I definitely had a good solid few months when I moved offices, where my Internet was not reliable. It was some of the most painful times. I had people messaging me who were listeners going, "Have you checked your Internet? It's cutting out a lot." It makes for a terrible experience. You're absolutely right. David: I love your guest booking experience as well, because you are very definitive with guests, with regards to what's good and what's not so good as well. I've done the same thing with many shows as well. Unless you're very specific with people, then people are going to get it wrong, or their audio quality isn't going to be as good as it could actually be, and you're not going to be delivering the highest quality of audio product to your consumers. Some people are switch off because of it, so you have to be like that. Kathleen: Yeah, no one wants you in their ear for 45 minutes with terrible static, or as one of my guests once did, shuffling papers right next to the microphone. David: Yes, or beards, yes. Kathleen: It's just a horrible sound. David: I don't know if you've experienced many beards on microphones. They are not so good either. Kathleen: Yeah, yeah it makes a big difference. So, what type of podcasting were you doing that led to the live streaming? From podcasting to live streaming David: Sure. I got more serious about podcasting about 2014. I think I played with a little bit before then, but as I alluded to, I did about 20 or so shows to begin with solely in audio format. I moved onto what I considered the next stage to getting a decent microphone, doing things like incorporating my intros, my outros, and different bumper noises. I've got this app on my iPad called Boss Jock that I connect to a mixer, and then I can bring that audio into it as well. That makes the show easier to edit in that you don't have to do everything towards the end as well. After that, I started recording on pre-recorded video. I started Hangouts at the time as unlisted video. Then that made me feel more comfortable, because I knew that if everything went wrong I didn't have to release the video at all. It made me feel less stressed to begin with, when I was getting involved with video. The next stage after that, as I see it, is live streaming and actually live streaming to social media, and looking at comments as you're live streaming as well, and being able to bring those comments into the conversation. There's so many different skills involved, and different aspect of that when you're starting video to begin with. You want to be comfortable looking into the camera, at least for the intro and the outro sections of your show. You want to be incorporating your musical elements, if you bring that into the show as well, and of course the readers' comments as well. You just can't do that to begin with. I see so many people, as I mentioned earlier, just starting live streaming and not being able to do that because they haven't gone through those steps. Kathleen: You were doing some podcasting, if I'm correct, for SEMrush as well as for MobileMonkey. You've had a lot of experience, both with your own podcasts, working with some other companies. David: Yeah. Repurposing podcast content into a book Kathleen: What gave you the idea to think about venturing into the world of books? David: Of books. Well, I've done, as you say, a lot of different podcasts. I've probably interviewed about 500 different marketers, so I've got an incredible database of contacts out there, people that I can reach out to. About 2015 or so, I decided to produce an end-of-year show, so perhaps I'd interviewed about 100 people by then. I thought, "Okay, it's be a lovely pre-Christmas-type show to get 20 or 30 marketers on and all give their thoughts of the year, what's their number one tip from what's happened during the year." Yeah, I had about 20 or 30 people on. It was about a two hour live stream, and it went really nicely. The following year, I decided to double it up and potentially make a book out of it. The following year, I did a four hour live stream and had just over a hundred marketers join me live. I gave them all three minutes each to share their number one actionable tip. I took the content and made my first book out of it. It did fairly well. It sold a few thousand copies. It just seemed to be the next logical step in terms of publishing content. I think you have to go where the opportunity is, but you have to really look to see what your competitors are doing out there, and also you have to work harder than other people who are out there. 10 years ago, I used to be able to publish blog posts and quite easily get those blog posts ranked. Then it moved on, and you had to publish incredible blog posts that 2000-5000 words long. Now, unless you've got a fairly authoritative domain name, it's even quite hard to get those sorts of posts ranked. "So, where are the other publishing opportunities?" I thought. Well, perhaps it's not even online at all. Loads of people still read books. It doesn't have to be Kindle book. It doesn't have to be any book in any form. It could be a physical copy book, and people still read physical books: paperback books, hard copy books. "First of all," I thought, "Well, it's very hard to publish a book. It's a lot more effort to publish a book. So, if I publish a book then it's going to position me above other people producing content around the same kind of topic." Then I thought, "Well, there are thousands and thousands of people that want to read this copy in book form as well." So, I guess those are some of the reasons I chose to publish a book. Kathleen: I have to laugh, because hazards of podcasting, I'm in my quiet home office and my dogs start to go crazy. That's the home alarm system, as I like to call it. David: Oh, that's great. I heard that in the background, Kathleen. I was wondering if you were able to edit it out at all. I thought, "Okay-" Kathleen: No, I always tell my guests when I listen to podcasts, I like it to be really organic and not overly scripted. So I say, "You know what, we're going to roll with it." So, I'm leaving this segment in so everybody can hear my two Labrador Retrievers who like to play- literally, if anybody walks by the front of my house they go crazy. David: And I was trying to talk over it, thinking- Kathleen: You're so good. David: Maybe you were going to be able to edit that out, and it was going to be easier for you to- Kathleen: No, we'll leave it in, because- David: Okay. Kathleen: It just gives more color to what's really happening behind the scenes. David: Great stuff. How David published his book Kathleen: You decided to publish a book. Can you talk a little bit about how you went about doing that, because I've had a couple of people on who've talked about writing and publishing books, and they've all taken different approaches. This is something I'm very interested in. I've spoken to so many marketers who've talked about either wanting to write a book, or wanting to use the content creators within their company to create a book as part of their marketing strategy. David: Yeah. Kathleen: There's the route of working with a publisher. There's self-publishing. There's so many options now. Can you talk about how you specifically did that? David: Sure. I haven't gone down the working with a publisher route, mainly because I think there's more profit in it being a self-publisher. I initially, several years ago, published some books just for Kindle. If you publish books for Kindle, then as long as you're charging between $2.99 and $9.99 in US dollars, then you can get 70% commission as a result of doing that. So, that's quite appealing. Then after that, when I published my first physical book, which was called "Digital Marketing" in 2017, that book was also published using a service called CreateSpace at the time. That's been merged into KDP, which is called Kindle Direct Publishing, but you can publish paperback books through that service. If I'm publishing a book for $14.99, and through that service for a book that is 268 pages long, it's costing me about $4.10 per book to get that book produced- Kathleen: Hard copy. David: No, that's our paperback copy. That's a paperback. Kathleen: Oh, okay. Well, yeah, but I mean printed. Printed copy. David: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, sorry. I'm just differentiating because hard copies- Kathleen: Hard cover and paperback, right, right, right. David: Exactly. They cost quite differently. But paperback, they cost in general just over $4.00 if you're producing a book which is about the same size as mine, which is 268 pages of paper. Kathleen: Am I correct that, because I've talked to somebody else who has used Kindle Direct Publishing, am I correct that there is no minimum quantity for orders? You can order like one at a time? David: Yes. Yeah, yeah exactly. You can order them yourself personally. You can get your pre-published copies, which have a bit of a nasty extra bit on the front to say, "Do not resell." Then after it's published, then you can get the proper versions, which are the single copies. However, obviously you're going to be charged postage for doing that. So, sometimes you're better off getting 10 copies, or something like that. You can also do the same through another service called IngramSpark. IngramSpark also will produce that hard cover version of your book for you. If you're producing a hard cover version, then it's normally about five or six dollars to produce, because you've got that hard cover on top of it, and you've got your sleeve on top of it as well. So, you generally have to price it a bit higher. Hard cover versions, they're generally about $25.00. The paperback version is generally about $15.00. There's not much more profit in the hard cover version. I think the only benefits really for the hard cover version, is the perceived value of it. Because again, it looks like a higher quality product, so if you have your own events, and you're speaking at events, and you want to take hard cover copies of your book with you and sign them, then the hard covers are very nice in terms of perceived authority. Kathleen: Yeah, it's really fascinating to me, because the technology is such now that anyone can really do this. There's no issue with affordability. There's no issue with you need to have the connections in the publisher world. Anyone can write a book and publish it, and create a really very professional quality-looking printed version, as well as Kindle version, which presents an amazing opportunity from a marketing standpoint that so few people have taken advantage of. David: Well, it's hard, hard work to do and it takes a lot of time to do. So, I can understand where people don't want to do it. But I think it's about planning your content marketing out for the entire year, and if you're doing a podcast, if you're doing a series of blog posts, if you really think about it then you can design 12 chapters in a book out of the content that you produce. To a certain degree, you can write your book over your year out of your content that you're already producing. So, it needn't take a whole lot more effort. Which came first, the podcast or the book? Kathleen: Is that the way that you went about doing it this time? Did you really conceive of this in advance, and then create audio content kind of knowing that your end game was to create the book? Or did you have this audio content and then think, "Wait, this would be great fodder for a book." David: It's the way that I probably will do it in the future at some point. What I did this time was a few months ago, I hosted a massive live stream which was eight hours long. I had 134 marketers on that. Then I took the transcript of that and then completely rewrote it. Then I determined the categories of each piece of advice that all the marketers share. So, it was just the one question that I asked everyone. Hello doggy. I've got a two old son, and he likes to say, "Hello doggy." Anyway, look I think what I did this time was a whole lot of work, probably too much work, but it was a learning process as well. I categorized all the content after receiving it, because I was just about to say I asked all the marketers the same question, "What's your number one actionable marketing tip right now?" They all shared that number one tip. I thought the tips that were shared fitted very neatly into three key sections of the book, and then also into 12 categories from there as well. The 12 categories, of course, turned into 12 chapters. From the research, I've done 12 chapters. It's quite as nice number to have within a book. That's a nice way to break it down, if you're planning a book as well. If you want to write a whole book as a one-off, 60,000 words, that sounds quite a lot. But if you break it down into 5000 words per chapter, even 4000 words per chapter, plus an introduction and conclusion, then that's not too much to do. The difference between blogging and writing a book Kathleen: Now a lot of the marketers that listen to this podcast are prolific content creators. They are very accustomed to blogging, to writing articles. Many of them are also podcasters of their own right. I'm interested to know from your perspective, what do they need to know about creating content that is intended for a book as opposed to writing articles or blogs, which is a little bit more episodic, is there something different that you need to do as you approach that project? David: I think the key thing is, is to have that thread. So, to have that thread that binds the different chapters together. So, you can't just write 12 separate large pieces of content without that intended thread together, and the intended overarching topic of your book. I think you have to start with the end in mind. A good way to do that, is actually to research Amazon, to have a look at categories of books and to see what exists already, and where the opportunities are. Because one outcome that some authors wish to achieve is to get a bestseller. You can get bestsellers in different categories of Amazon as well. It's quite nice to take a screenshot of your book being number one in a category of Amazon. If you look into what topic of marketing, or another area of your business, and you find a category that's either under-serviced or perhaps doesn't actually have the type of book that you believe that you can offer, then that's a good place to start. Then you've got your topic of your book. Then it's a case of brainstorming maybe three sections, then four different chapters within those sections of your book, and then starting writing from there. Then you've got your thread, which binds everything together. Marketing your book Kathleen: So you write the copy, you probably create cover artwork, you pull all this into the Kindle Direct Publishing system so that you're able to publish the book through it. You just talked about people wanting to have Amazon bestsellers. What does someone need to know as far as the work that has to happen to market the book, especially before it's even published, because the little amount of research I've done into this, it's very clear to me that a lot needs to be done before the book even hits the virtual shelves, to lay the groundwork for a successful book launch. I'd love to hear from your standpoint what you're doing for that. David: From a successful marketing perspective on Amazon, one of the key things is reviews. It makes it more likely for people who stumble upon your book to decide to make that purchase if there are positive reviews. So I think that's a bit of a given. It's much, much better to have something in the region of 10 reviews in the marketplace that you want to target. I'm targeting with USA and the UK, and you want to have a reasonable number of views in those marketplaces. You've also got to be thinking about [crosstalk 00:31:22] together. You've got your hard cover, your paperback, and also your Kindle edition, and perhaps even an audiobook version as well. They can be all tied together. You can ask Amazon to tie those things together. One of the important things to try and get on a bestseller list within Amazon is to get a decent number of sales within a short time period. I would be guessing to a certain degree, but I'm pretty sure that if you can get maybe even just 100 sales of your book within 24 hours in a category of Amazon that's not particularly competitive, then you're quite likely to get fairly high within that category. So, a number of reviews. If you publish your book a few days before you intend to say that you're going to publish it, you reach out to your friends and your colleagues, and you ask them to buy it, and then you ask them to submit a review as well. Then on publishing day, you do some kind of live event. I'm doing a massive live stream on launch day. One of the intentions behind that is to get as many people as possible to buy it as soon as possible, and to get that algorithm of Amazon to notice that there's a lot of sales of that particular product happening. That's going to move it up the rankings. Kathleen: So I did see that. I went to your MarketingNowBook.com website, which if you're listening, you should check it out. I saw that you have the book launch party set for December 10th. I'm definitely going to sign up to listen to that. I'm curious to see how that comes off. It's a great idea. It's interesting what you said about having a slightly different date when the book goes up onto Amazon versus the official launch date. David: Yeah, well you can do that with one person. With IngramSpark, it's possible. There are lots of strange technicalities. With IngramSpark, it's possible to have your book available to purchase prior to launch date. With Amazon paperback, with a KDP paperback, it's not possible to do that. But with Kindle, it is possible to do that, to have pre-orders, is the technical term. You could have your book available for pre-order. I believe though any sales made within that pre-order period doesn't count towards the ranking after the book's been ranked. That's not going to help a lot with regards to your ranking afterwards, so you do want to make a lot of sales, if possible, on rank day. What I'm going to do is make my hard cover version and my Kindle version available on December 10th when it launches. I'm in the process of doing a quiet launch for the paperback version. That's going to be publicly available hopefully within the next few days. We're recording this on the second of December, so it'll be available a few days just before the 10th of December if everything goes according to plan. Then I'm going to get a few friends and colleagues to buy it, and to publish reviews on that version. I'm going to have that linked together with the hard cover version and the Kindle version, which is going to be then published on the 10th of December. Kathleen: That's great. Well, I can't wait to check out the book when it comes out. Again, if you're listening, you definitely need to go to MarketingNowBook.com so that you can sign up to attend the live stream. This has been so interesting, David, just hearing this whole process laid out. While I think you've made it clear that obviously writing a book is no easy undertaking, and I think it's important to understand, but I also feel like you've made it very accessible in terms of understanding the process of bringing a book to market. So, I appreciate that. David: Yeah, hopefully a couple of people give it a go. It's not easy, but if you plan it out beforehand, then you can save yourself a bit of heartache, perhaps, that I've gone through. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Yeah, that's great. Now I have two question I always ask my guests, and I'm curious to hear what you're going to say. We talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it right now with inbound marketing? David: The company that springs to mind is a company called Conversion Rate Experts. They've been doing this for a while. What they do is they put together blog posts that are on a fairly infrequent basis. They probably publish maybe just once every two months or so, but they are incredible case studies that really help you with conversion rate optimization. Although these blog posts are thousands of words long, they've got videos in there, they've got wonderful images in there as well. You feel that you're getting a lot of value from that. Towards the bottom of the page, they say what you should be doing now. Then they've got a list of call to actions at the bottom that introduces you to their service. But it never feels like they're asking for the order beforehand. They're providing so much value beforehand, and they link up lovely emails with this as well, and entice people to read the articles. I think that a lot of marketers haven't necessarily got the right idea of what a blog is. A lot of blog publishers don't have this sense. Obviously, blogs originated from web blogs, which were regular updates of people's activities. To me, a blog is just a publishing opportunity. It's a CMS now, with some marketing opportunities baked into it. It's just a publishing opportunity. If it's a publishing opportunity, you can publish any type of content in there, and I think this company, Conversion Rate Experts, demonstrate that a blog can be used for different reasons. Kathleen: I love that point that you just made about a blog being a publishing opportunity. The last job that I was in, I was really charged with building out essentially a brand publishing business for the company, which is really just like a blog on steroids, if you will. It's articles, it's podcasts, it's all the different type of content that you think of when you think of a publisher. There's no reason that any company can't do that. It's certainly a more aggressive approach to content marketing, but it can be a very powerful one, all of which lives on a blogging platform. Kathleen: So, you're absolutely right when you characterize it that way. David: Great. Kathleen: Love that. Now, second question, the world of digital marketing is changing at what can seem like a lightening-fast pace. How do you personally stay educated and up-to-date? David: Funny enough actually, since I've started being really serious about podcasting in the last five years or so, I've probably read less to keep myself up-to-date with things. I've interviewed about 500 or so different top marketers out there, and that's been a wonderful way to keep up-to-date with things. I would say to people if you haven't started a podcast, simply do it to have great conversations with powerful authorities within your niche. I would have done all these podcast episodes with a view to just having the incredible conversations, and making incredible contacts that I've made. Obviously, not all my guests would have wanted to do that. They would have wanted to have the content distributed as well. But for me personally, that's been a great source of knowledge. I listen to a couple of podcasts as well. I listen to a podcast called Podcasters Roundtable, which is a good source of podcasting news, what's happening in Apple Podcasts, and podcasting in general. I listen to Mixergy, which is more of a digital business/entrepreneurship-type show, but that's a great source of information for me with regards to what's happening right now in digital businesses. Then I could tie different marketing activities up to that. The final source that I'll give you, if I'm hosting shows that relate to SEO and pay per click, then Search Engine Land is probably one of the key blogs that I go to, to keep abreast of the latest news there. Kathleen: Yeah, that's a great one. You are preaching to the choir when you talk about the power of podcasting. I always say if people listen to this, they've probably heard me say it several times, that I would keep doing the podcast even if no one listens, which as you pointed out, I'm sure my guests would not want that. It's an incredible learning experience, and I get to talk to people I would never otherwise meet, and to learn from them. That's just such an amazing gift, so I could not agree more with what you said about that. David: Absolutely. How to connect with David Kathleen: Well, if you are listening and you are interested in connecting with David or learning more, David, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you? David: I've got a brand new domain name that I just acquired a couple of months ago or so. Obviously, I'm using MarketingNowBook.com as the landing page for the book, but I'm really happy that I've finally got the DavidBain.com domain name. It took me a long time to get that. There were many people that squatted on it for a while, but I eventually got it. I had to go down to auction to get it. I'm thankful to have David Bain on LinkedIn, David Bain on Twitter, and DavidBain.com as well. I guess any of those areas are good. You know what to do next... Kathleen: That's great. All right, well if you're listening and you liked what you heard, you learned something new, please head to Apple Podcasts and leave a five star review for the podcast. That's how new people discover us. If you know somebody else whose doing kick ass inbound marketing work, Tweet me @WorkMommyWork, because I would love to have them be my next interview. Kathleen: Thanks so much, David. This was a lot of fun. David: Great to be on with you, Kathleen. Thanks again. Kathleen: Yeah, and you win the award, by the way, for muscling through more dog barks than any other guest. So, kudos to you. David: Sounds good.

We welcome Daniel Vitalis onto the pod today and might I just say stoke level is pretty high! Daniel is a forager, registered Maine Guide, writer, public speaker, interviewer, and lifestyle pioneer who is deeply passionate about helping others reconnect with wildness, both inside and outside of themselves. After learning to hunt, fish, and forage as an adult, Daniel created WildFed; a show, podcast, and lifestyle brand that integrates hunting, fishing, foraging, and ecology with nutrition, cooking, community, and outdoor adventure.    "WildFed on its face is about food, but beneath the surface of that, it's about a lot more. It's about how we are in relationship with wild species and wild places." -  Daniel Vitalis   Daniel and Mason discuss: Daniel's WildFed food philosophy. The importance of becoming enmeshed into your ecosystem and utilising your local food shed. The hunting, gathering, collecting and foraging of wild foods. Staying grounded and undogmatic in your approach to living consciously, sustainably and in harmony with the earth. Applying traditional hunter gather philosophy and practice to modern day life. The significance of developing a relationship to the earth and to the species that inhabit it, especially in our modern era of artificial intelligence and disconnect.   Who is Daniel Vitalis? Daniel Vitalis is the host of WildFed. WildFed is a show, podcast, and lifestyle brand that integrates hunting, fishing, foraging, and ecology with nutrition, cooking, community, and outdoor adventure. For ten years Daniel lectured around North America and abroad, offering workshops that helped others lead healthier, more nature-integrated lives. A successful entrepreneur, Daniel founded the nutrition company SurThrival.com in 2008. Most recently, Daniel has hosted the popular podcast ReWild Yourself.  Daniel is a Registered Maine Guide, writer, public speaker, interviewer, and lifestyle pioneer who’s especially interested in helping people reconnect with wildness, both inside and outside of themselves.  After learning to hunt, fish, and forage as an adult, Daniel created WildFed to inspire others to start a wild-food journey of their own. Headquartered in the Lakes Region of Maine, he lives with his beautiful wife Avani and their Plott Hound Ellie.   Resources: Daniel Vitalis Instagram Daniel Vitalis Facebook WildFed Website WildFed Podcast WildFed Interactive Program WildFed on Facebook   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) Daniel, thanks so much for coming on the pod, man.   Daniel: (00:04) Yeah, man, I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for sharing my voice with your platform here.   Mason: (00:09) I know that there's going to be a bunch of SuperFeasters that are like super stoked to see... Already I've hinted that you are coming on and they're all just like, "Yes." Then I'm really excited about like a bunch of people who maybe... A little bit early on their onset into the health scene. I'm really excited about introducing them to your work, and then this new project. Are you at home in Maine at the moment?   Daniel: (00:35) Yeah, I am. Yep right at my house. I don't get out too much anymore. I travel a little bit, but as I get older it's like I really want to be based out of my home. I spend a lot of the time, a lot of the last 10 years on the road, but now I've got so much, I'm so integrated into this place with what I'm doing now that it's like, you got to really talk me out.   Mason: (01:00) WildFed, which we'll jump right into. That seems to be like this pinnacle declaration for your public work as well. That that's what you're doing. You're throwing your roots down, and then through that I've realised that on the stealth you've become a guide to me anyway. You've become like a guide in Maine. That's an interesting mindset already that I think is entwined into what's now culminating in WildFed from being someone who's traveling all over the world, all over America, doing the LA conferences. All that stuff to now being, really living and breathing… That was a long-term like little deviation. What was in that process psychologically and emotionally to really throw down your roots?   Daniel:  (01:46) Yeah, well, I mean you look back on 10 years and it makes sense. The journey makes sense. But if I tell you about point A and then point B, they don't seem to almost like line up. But my journey has been that I started off speaking in those conferences. I have all these raw food vegan folks because I came out of that scene. They would let me speak at their conferences. I was not a vegan and I was not a raw foodist. I had been in the past, but I wasn't by the time I started my public journey. Those are early days of YouTube before podcasting. That was before social media man, it's so strange to think about that. Because it's so recently really. Now we're really talking like 12 years ago probably. I'd get up on these stages and my message would just be like starting to contradict the whole purpose of the event.   Daniel: (02:36) It'd be this thing to push veganism, to push raw foodism. I would have stuff that touched in with that, but I was into this idea of, well, what are like natural humans? What do they do on the landscape? What do they do without superfoods? What do they do without the health food stores and internet suppliers and stuff? What's natural for people? I always wanted to talk about that and explore that idea. I would get up and I'd give my talk. Because I was popular with audiences, I kept being invited back. My message grew further and further away from that idea. I started there, but I kept on the journey following the path. Even though a lot of people are like, "I don't like this direction, Daniel, you're starting to get away from our ideals."   Mason: (03:21) Well, what was interesting, and I really I'm aware. We don't want to go too far into this thing to the history. We're here to talk about WildFed. That's what I want to talk to you about. I was someone in that audience, really loving the fact that you were up there talking about like booze. There was this subconscious awareness in one pocket that we appreciate that we're going through a change, and we liked originally what the health scene was about. We were opposing what was deteriorating us. Then there was that split of people falling in love with that push back against society into whatever.   Mason: (04:00) It happens with anything. It happens with diet. You more than anyone have led the charge in terms of making that distinction around veganism. But of course it happens with the carnivore diet and TCM diets and everything. Everyone's just a fanatic. But I really liked that anarchist energy, and I think everyone secretly did as well. That's why you kept on getting invited back and it was such a-   Daniel: (04:25) I was amazed they would have me back year after year, but eventually obviously, we parted ways and I started my podcast ReWild Yourself, which I ran for three years as a fluke. I was really writing an online magazine and I wanted multimedia. I started doing interviews and pretty quick those interviews were just so much more… People liked my writing, a small group like 6,000, 7,000 people reading what I'm writing. 100,000 people are listening to the podcast and it's like, "Okay, this is really what people want. Less of me just writing these long articles. More of me interviewing." Before I knew it, there was this podcast. It was early days of podcasts, I hadn't set out to start one. That podcast ReWild Yourself was exploring like what's natural for human beings if they step outside of our industrial system?   Daniel: (05:11) What would we be like if we lived on the landscape, and what do we know about the health outcomes of people who live that naturally? Hunter-gatherer peoples. I just got fascinated by it. I was talking to so many different characters, psychologists and doctors and nutritionists and death experts and birth experts. Just it kept coming clear and clearer to me that being divorced from nature was the root cause of our problem. That led me deeper into foraging, eventually led me to hunting and fishing and this idea of like, how do I apply this stuff? Because I didn't want to end up like the Biohackers, walking around with big orange sunglasses on and a bunch of electrodes tuned to me, and breathing some weird modulated air. Just gets so outrageous that you're like this is the opposite of what I want.   Mason: (05:56) I remember you actually because I followed along what was really interesting is you shared your inner journey in terms of your away from a superfood packet towards maybe more of a subsistence on nature. That's what I've always read in everyone's comments for you. Because people come across your work and they're like, "Oh, cool. He's hunting and gathering. He's from Maine. That's what he does. He's a hunter." In WildFed you say, "I didn't grow up this way. I've had to learn this shit." That's what has been… The people along the way. I read your comments and everyone goes, "I appreciate so much you sharing this inner journey with everyone." I remember a pivotal episode when I think you had like a sleep expert, but like a Biohacking sleep expert on the podcast.   Mason: (06:41) In reflection after that podcast, I could hear you going, “You know what, I don't want to be taping up my curtain. I don't want to be putting tape all over little electrical things all over my house.” You want to leave the window open. That was a pivotal one for me as well because there's all these crossroads as we go along in this journey. It's something I've learned from you, is how to be aware of the upcoming crossroads. That last night when we were watching WildFed, Tahnee, my fiancé, she was saying, and she's been following you before we got together as well at, a long time. She's like, "I really love that, once again you're not presenting yourself as an expert. You're very confident in what you know, you're just very adamant about your ongoing journey once again."   Daniel: (07:32) Go ahead.   Mason: (07:33) I was just going to say that allows you to be aware of crossroads coming. Then you get to go deeper rather than getting over identified with a stage persona.   Daniel: (07:43) That's a huge danger, a pitfall. I talk about it a lot that I see happen where people get so pigeonholed into something they had been into in the past, and then they feel like they can't break free. The longer you go doing that, the harder it is once you… I remember just like I cut my hair at one point. I don't know if you remember back in the day I had long hair. It's just like even that was like, people have you so, they want you to be this one character. I feel bad for like when an actor has an iconic role, it's like you're Jason Bourne in a movie, and then you want to do something radically different. People are like, "No, you're Jason Bourne." It's like, "Oh, come on." We're dynamic people. Another thing though I'll say is that I've had many opportunities along the way to root in and become the expert on the thing that I've been spending time on. I always like to push forward.   Daniel: (08:36) The challenge with that is that I'm always the beginner in a scene. I'm always the new guy everywhere I go, because I'm constantly trying to learn new stuff. It can be you have to get comfortable with that, like the discomfort of that. You have to be able to relax into the discomfort of being the new guy everywhere if you're going to constantly learn new stuff, and you surround yourself [inaudible 00:08:59]. Back to it my podcasts led me to realizing that I would be a prisoner to all of these life hacks, and all of these diet hacks and eventually the encumbrance of it. When I started off, I remember before I started speaking, I was like 19 years old, walking around in Hawaii in nothing but a pair of shorts, barefoot on the beach. That's where I felt the most real and alive. Then before you know it, you're encumbered with just all of these things to be healthy.   Daniel: (09:27) You're like, wait a second, this is the opposite of where… I noticed that anything taken too far becomes the opposite of what it starts off as. That's usually what ends up happening. You can see this in a lot of people's career trajectory, which is why I don't want to get too stuck in any one thing. What happened with ReWild Yourself is I kept learning more about wild food and I kept resonating to that. Because food was really my first passion. I realised like of all this stuff that I've learned about, the one thing that I really I'm most drawn to doing, where I want to take it next is into the wild food arena. Rather than making the mistake I made in the past, which is like, "Can I be 100% this or can I do this all the way?" That's like that vegan thing or that carnivore thing where it's like, "Well no, I'm going to make a commitment for life to only do this one thing."   Daniel: (10:12) It was just like, "Man, can I keep pursuing this idea of wild food in a more moderate..." what I think of as moderate, most people think of as still pretty extreme. Can I hunt fish and forage for calories and can I make it a real thing? Can I bring it into my house? Just to tie it back to your show theme too, that started for me with medicinal herbs. That's how I got first excited about, it was foraging chaga, foraging, reishi. Because as somebody who was into superfoods, the cost of those things is high, and the connection to the thing is less than when you go get it yourself, and that was more exciting.   Daniel: (10:45) That was my first inroad, and then eventually it was like, "Wait, can I do this to fill my refrigerator and my freezer with food?" That led me to where I'm at today, which is making this show WildFed and doing the podcast WildFed and just exploring what a modern hunter-gatherer looks like, who lives in a super developed industrial society.   Mason: (11:06) I really appreciate you saying like someone looking in, they're going to be like, "This is full on man. He's foraging for like everything." But I know you can take it way further. The fact that you're taking your ingredients to a gastropub, and allowing him to have his little injection of his other ingredients. Some of it's like a sustainable agricultural crop or even him using his own chicken stock or something.   Daniel: (11:31) I'm sure it's like mayonnaise and mustard and ketchup. I don't care anymore. My thing of like food exclusivity, because once you start to get the very best food in the world, it starts to, for me, it started to make me relax about other foods a little bit more. You know what I'm saying? It's like when you have venison to eat, if somebody wants to put it on a piece toast, you're like, okay cool man. Because I know I got this thing so I don't care as much as I used to when I was like always fretting about what I had for food.   Daniel: (12:03) So it's created a relaxation in me, which has been really healing. The relaxation comes from several different components of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that I've been promoting. But yeah, you got to see the show man. I'm curious how it landed for you and what you thought about it. Because here's the thing, I've been incubating this project for two years and I've gotten very little feedback because I've been really secretive about it.   Mason: (12:24) We know you're [inaudible 00:12:25]   Daniel: (12:25) You're one of like 20 people that's seen in it, man.   Mason: (12:28) I feel so special. I do.   Daniel: (12:30) Seriously, you're one of like 20 people that's seen it. I'm really curious how you felt about it.   Mason: (12:36) We loved it. I think especially coming from like Tahnee and myself watching it. This is off the bat. Watching the first episode. Okay, two things off the bat. I love that there's like three or four people involved in the production, and the quality is very high. I noticed that straight away because that's something that again, that is in alignment with the simplicity of this whole lifestyle. I appreciated that, and appreciated the fact that the production was really high as well because let's face it, it matters. Second of all, straight off the bat, I liked that I know you and I know that watching one episode is gonna be very good, and it was put together very well in one episode. It had a story in the beginning and middle and end. It almost has its own catalyst in there for like the emotional ride.   Mason: (13:27) However, I know that there is a plan over the entire series to take you on a journey, and you didn't shy away from that. That's what I would definitely, anyone listening, I would recommend staying in that little journey, in that path. Because off the bat, the first episode is the slowness. That was like where you got to you're like it's something about the how slow, the speed of food. There's something slow about this lifestyle. That was after you were going after, I think it was the fiddleheads and it was just like, "Fuck, we're too early. Fuck, we're too late." Then the turkey hunting. It wasn't just this, "We're going to give them a little insight into how frustrating it can be. We'll quickly go, missed it, the turkey's going away." We were there and you took us on the journey. That was something I think you were maybe consciously doing.   Mason: (14:24) It was like I want to make sure that I don't glorify this lifestyle, or just show peak experiences. I really want everyone to be involved, and then see the underlying principle, which what came out in that first episode anyway was, there's just something about the speed of food. The speedier it is, the more it tastes bland and I think you said like cardboard. That straight away there's principles. You don't deliver rules. That's what I've got out of the three episodes I've seen, there's principles that you keep slippery and non-dogmatic so that it can be integrated into wherever someone is at. That's genuinely where they're at because that's something that doesn't happen. It's like, "Wherever you're at, it's okay, you do this," but, wink, wink, you really do need to get to my point in order to like [crosstalk 00:15:15].   Mason: (15:16) There was a real, it is that softness, and that first principle anyway got me really thinking about how that pace of food even going to farmers markets, I don't feel anything is bad or wrong. It's just made me really think about the fact that it's like a king tide when you're out in the surf. The more and more you get that quick speedy food, the more you get sucked out really quick. It's hard to get back into really feeling the essence in that romance, in the slowness of food and really earning it in one sense. Then just obviously showing the respect in the currency of time that you're giving. That was my initial takeaway, man.   Daniel: (15:57) The pace of food thing is really important to me, because I like that there's tension sometimes. Even with plants as you saw, it's not just like, "Oh, they can't run away, so I'll just walk out and get them." You've got this very, as you saw with the fiddleheads, it's very delicate time window, where loading up the canoe and you and your partner going out and paddling out to the spot, it's not something you're going to do every single day. You've got to like, "Okay, when do I think they're going to be ready?" Then you paddle out and you're like, "Oh, no, we're too early, so now I've got to go back." Then you go back and it's like, "Oh man, are we too late?" Because even they can slip away from you because they got this little window where they're edible. Then as you see with hunting, I think hunting has one of the biggest PR problems.   Daniel: (16:41) People have such a mistaken idea about it because of what they see. You see people who've hunted their whole life, they got 40 years of experience. In hunter-gatherer societies, it's pretty understood that as a hunter you reach peak efficiency in your 40s. Because you've got all of those decades of experience that have built up. When you start and you're 40, I was 35 or so when I started, it's like maybe a little older than that. You don't know anything. It's like trying to get going. You make mistakes. I want to put all that in there. I mean everybody makes mistakes. I want to put that in there so people could see the pitfalls and the challenges. Another thing that happens is people will think, "Well yeah, it's real easy to hunt when you have a gun, oh it's cheating." Actually it's not really that simple. It's pretty complex.   Daniel: (17:31) You got to really understand animals, and in order to understand those animals, you've got to understand those animals' foods. You got to understand their natural life histories, and before you know it, you're becoming so enmeshed into your ecosystem, that this idea of you're an alien on earth who is like can't touch anything because humans just destroy everything they come in contact with. Instead of that you start to like reorient yourself to like, "Oh, I'm part of this ecosystem." It's not just ecological literacy, which a lot of people are lacking, but it's like integration into your landscape. You become this animal on your landscape. Sometimes predatory, sometimes herbivorous. That's one of the things that's neat about being a human is we're like a bear or a pig in that we eat both plants and animals.   Daniel: (18:14) Sometimes I'm out there foraging and I'm clearly not a predator on the landscape. Other times I'm out there as a predatory animal. We have these two different, and I want to, if you've noticed the way the show is put together I like to leapfrog scenes back and forth, where sometimes I'm a predator and sometimes I'm the forager. Sometimes I'm a squirrel and sometimes I'm a hawk. Both are legitimate ways we interact with our landscape. But what I really hope that show does, because obviously, where you live, you're seeing a different suite of plants and animals that are familiar to you. But I'm hoping that what it does is inspires people wherever they are to get involved in their food shed. Because wherever you live there's lots to hunt, gather, collect, forage, whatever it is.   Daniel: (18:58) I want people to go, "I might not have fiddleheads, but what do I have in the spring?" Then lastly, I just want to say to your point about a seasonal arc. One of the things I've noticed from this lifestyle that really excites me is, the very first thing I'm doing in the beginning of the year, a couple months from now, is I'm tapping my maple trees and I'm making maple syrup so I get all my sugar for the year. Then it goes into the, what you saw, the fiddleheads, leaks and turkeys. Then over the course of the season, I have these activities that I'm doing every year, and every year I get a little better and I learn a little bit more and it begins in the snow and then it ends in the snow. In the middle is that summer, like that beautiful peak summer growth that happens here in the temperate regions of the United States.   Daniel: (19:41) I wanted people to see a seasonal arc, because this world we're living in now is becoming so homogenous, especially with the way our tech climate control is, and the way our built environment is. Even though the weather is one way outside, inside's just always the same flat line thing. I wanted people to see these beautiful seasons. Each episode has a show arc to it and its own tensions and wins and losses and all of that. But then there's this arc of the season, and that's one of the most powerful things about this lifestyle for me is that every part of the year, I have something I'm excited about, like really excited about. It's snow on the ground right now. I can't get at the acorns, the hunting is all winding down, but I know ice fishing is coming. I'm so excited about that. When that ends, it's maple syrup time, it's just goes, goes and goes forever.   Mason: (20:34) That's the simplicity you were talking about like a calming effect on your body I think, of anything that's made in the West, it's that calming effect so that we can explore the nuances of our parasympathetic nervous system. Whenever I've had those longer periods in nature, there's a foraging friend that I haven't been out with him for a while. He's just North of Sydney though. He was always telling me he'd go out for weeks at a time, and he just watched his senses coming back online. He'd watch his hearing become acute, and he'd watch his eyes... I didn't even realise my eyesight was getting a little blurry at particular distances when he was out. It always reminded me that consistency of time in nature, that's going to be my ultimate health practice, no matter what.   Mason: (21:20) Then what you're talking about, just being on the terrain. Barefoot at times if appropriate. But even just watching the seasonality outside of a Gregorian calendar, that's something I've always really watched and considered. It's interesting because I had such a mental need, a high pace of learning the expertise of this healthy lifestyle. When you get into what you're talking about, that needs to be a slow journey. Understanding our own seasonal arc. Here, there's a beautiful Instagram here in Byron Bay in this region, koori country. It's a local mob sharing. All right. Now the winds of change, now we're getting the westerlies, now we're in this season. Right now you'll start seeing the pippies. You've got pippies over there, the little mollusc on the beach. You dig your feet in and you can go and like harvest your... It's beautiful. It's one of the easy accesses.   Daniel: (22:16) Collecting.   Mason: (22:18) Collecting, which brings me to my next point. The slowness I feel you'd probably coming from knowing the lifestyle that I come from having that raw food like 'raji baji'. For me there was a little bit of like the rules don't apply. I'm always ahead of the curve. Even if I enter into like this foraging landscape, it takes me a while sometimes to really slow down and up and think, "I will listen to this person who has that 30 years experience." Even though they don't share that baseline spring water, not bringing preservatives into their life. That's something I think I learned from you heavily as well.   Mason: (23:04) That ability to actually slow down and then what I think is important into your message you are actually willing to not just become a guide, but really understand this new terrain of foraging in terms of what are the regulations in order they are. We're new to this world. Remember these regulations are in there for a reason. There are quotas on what you can be harvesting. See for me, that would seem limiting coming from where I was coming from in the beginning.   Daniel: (23:38) Infinite consciousness, man.   Mason: (23:40) Infinite consciousness, yeah. I'm like the goose man. I can just cross borders. I don't need.. Yeah That kind of [inaudible 00:23:47]. That is something that was really like, it's really helping me go like, "Right this is community." It's already in existence and we can be bridges between those communities to an extent. This is the term that I hear in opposition to the foraging lifestyle. I just wanted that to be the context. Well, not everyone can do this. It's not sustainable. That's an interesting comment and it's like a cliché kind of thing and you go and then the cliché answer is like, "Well everyone doesn't have to do it. I'm doing it." But I feel like we can have more interesting conversations and I feel like you're important to that.   Daniel: (24:28) I'd like to explore that a little bit because it comes up so much.   Mason: (24:32) I'd love to hand it over to you, yeah please.   Daniel: (24:33) Well I just think that one's really interesting because it's like not everyone on the planet can play golf. That's not sustainable. But nobody's yelling that at people playing golf. Not everybody can do anything. There's like almost nothing that everyone can do sustainably. Why is it that I must defend against that? Also, why is the burden of planetary sustainability on my shoulders all of a sudden? I have to only do the things that everyone can do. Why? There are people more intelligent than me, and I'm not banging on their door like, "Why are you doing math problems I can't do? Not everyone can do that, so stop it." That doesn't make any sense. There's all this talk these days about privilege. It's like, I don't know, this is just what I'm doing. I'm not trying to exert a privilege. I'm not trying to say that everybody on the planet needs to do this.   Daniel: (25:23) Now I will say this, everybody on the planet used to do this. Everybody on the planet used to do this. You're only here, if you're on earth today, is because of the hunters and foragers of the past whose genetic lineage you are the current incarnation of. You do come from foragers. Now, I think of it like this, and this is an important aspect of why I created WildFed, because WildFed, I hope is a brand that goes on past me. I'm currently like a focal point in it, but that's not the long-term goal for me. I want to create a project that carries the torch of, I'll say foraging in a general sense. Because anthropologists will refer to foraging peoples as a shorthand for hunter-gatherers. I don't just mean plants here. I mean plants, animals, fungi, algae, everything. Some people need to carry the torch in this generation, especially in this generation more now than ever.   Daniel: (26:20) Although every generation for it to last, there needs to be people who carry it forward. We live in the era where the last hunting and gathering peoples are blinking out into extinction, extra patient or being assimilated into the modern lifestyle. They are probably not going to be able to carry that torch, the way that some of us are going to be able to. Secondary to that, is that they live in very remote pockets of the planet like Indonesia and parts of Africa and places in South America. But what about where we all live in the, you were saying the West earlier, in the developed parts of the world, and the industrialized parts of the world. Somebody needs to maintain that relationship. Here in the United States we have, like you there where you are, museums that are there, where there are people whose lives are dedicated to keeping aspects of the past alive.   Daniel: (27:11) Why is there nobody keeping our hunting and gathering tradition alive? Is that not more important to keep alive than memories of past wars or who invented light bulbs, or all of these things that we're keeping all that alive in museums. Or there's like museum martial arts, let's say. There's people who are practicing obscure martial arts from the past that have very little relevance to today, but they keep them alive as a museum art. You know what I'm talking about? So many things like that that we do, yet this fundamental thing that binds all humans together, which is how we got to be here, our fundamental relationship to the natural world, we need people keeping that alive, I think more fundamentally than anything. Partially what I'm doing with WildFed is just trying to pick up that torch and carry it forward. I'm most certainly not the only one.   Daniel: (28:02) I share this responsibility with a lot of my colleagues who are doing the same thing. Many of which are going to be featured in the video show, and many of which are featured on my podcast. People that I meet who are either doing it in a general, I'm doing it in a very generalist sense. Then there's people who are doing it in a much more specialized sense. My thing is a generalized hunting and gathering approach. But I really get excited when I meet somebody who's really specific on one thing, like they hunt bear, or they hunt only mushrooms or whatever it is because I throw a very wide but shallow net as a generalist. I get excited when somebody throws a very narrow but deep net, because I can learn so much from them. I'm trying to also create a platform that brings those people together.   Daniel: (28:47) Because you'll notice, I'm sure you've noticed this in the tonic herbalism thing, you'll get people who are all about foraging medicinal mushrooms. Tonic herbal mushrooms, but they don't hunt. Then the person who hunts would never even think about foraging those mushrooms. Then the person who is a dedicated plant forager might never hunt or fish. Or the fishermen might never... I'm trying to create a platform that will start to be a hub for all of those different people and those voices and those lifestyles to say, “Hey look, we're all sharing this one commonality here, which is wild foods.” It's so much more than nutrition. It's relationship to species. Because every plant, every mushroom, every animal, every algae is a living entity. It's about how we relate to that entity.   Daniel: (29:35) To me, there's a really deep thing going on here. Then how we relate to all of those identities together, those entities together is like how we relate to the ecosystem, and how we find relationship to it. It's just sad that we're at this point where we have to forge relationships with ecosystems as if we are from another planet. That really has bothered me over the years, this sense of alienness that we have to our own earth. Now where if you read headlines, you will see a lot more about people going to Mars than you will see about people making relationships with nature. You'll see stories about the Amazon burning, you'll see stories about the pollution of rivers and the extinction of species. Then you'll see stories about going to Mars. It's like, really, we're not going to stop first and fix this, we're just going to leave?   Daniel: (30:24) Isn't that like somebody in a relationship who has a bad relationship and so they split, and they get in another relationship, and the same thing happens, and they split. They never stop and face it, and face themselves and learn how to have a good relationship. It's like you just run away, run away, run away. Aren't we doing that right now? We trashed the planet and then we run to Mars and then what? Like trash Mars? Do we have a plan for Mars? What are we going to do with the garbage there? We're going to put in the ground like we did here. Where are we going with this? WildFed on its face is about food, but beneath the surface of that, it's about a lot more. It's about how we are in relationship with wild species and wild places.   Mason: (31:06) Yes, mike drop. I want to say that I definitely have got that sense over the years of creating that web weaving between all these specialised fields, and the sharing of knowledge, someone who's foraging for [inaudible 00:31:21] culinary mushrooms starting to open up into say like that medicinal mushroom world and vice versa. Creating this somewhat like beautiful fascial tensegrity between all these beautiful elements of the subsistence, on which I want to talk to you about. You were just talking about that seems like a very classic pattern of you get into a relationship, you screw it up, you bounce it, you get over to the next relationship and that's a pattern. Possibly developed genetically, who knows where it came from, maybe from parents patterns.   Daniel: (31:53) All kinds of things.   Mason: (31:57) Now what I see as you were talking about martial arts say Kendo in a dojo, what's the relevance of that? I see the relevance is that you get to do it in a very contained system that even though it's got this very certain element of making you mentally hone yourself. It's a very contained system where you can get into uncomfortable states in order to refine yourself. It's not this open ended, for lack of a better word, getting uncomfortable. Which is what I see is the difference between like a museum art and actually getting into the wild and foraging, and as you said, becoming a new beginner.   Mason: (32:35) That's uncomfortable in a beautiful, beautiful way. Now getting uncomfortable for me it seems like it's going to be the only access for us to, you know, getting out of our comfort zone to an extent, in order to deal with these patterns that we have as a species that is destroying where we came from. Can you talk about that connection through foraging, through the fishing, through the hunting? How does that actually help us in our inner world basically evolve and deal with this shit that's making us run away from the most important relationships of our lives?   Daniel: (33:14) There's a lot there, so lets unpack it. First I'll say you brought up Kendo like with full respect to practitioners of Kendo, you would be mistaken to think that that was a contemporary art that you were going to step into the octagon and fight an MMA specialist. You'd just get your ass handed to you right away. You'd be beat down. We know it because we created a forum to test people, and everybody brought their arts and pretty quick, everything went away except ground game grappling and standup game basically boxing type stuff. That survived and everything else was obliterated very quickly. Stylistic elements remain, but we see that those things are good. Kendo is good against Kendo in a controlled setting, but it doesn't work in the real world. I want to say that partially, with WildFed, one of the things I'm trying to do is show people real meals of food.   Daniel: (34:09) This isn't, "Oh, did you know dandelion is edible?" It's like, that's just some mental masturbation. Let's see you make a meal out of this stuff. Because that's where what's the saying? Like the rubber meets the road. It's like I wanted to show people the real thing because we're actually, this isn't just trail nibbling stuff where we're showing real meals coming out of these wild foods. That was important to me. Now to the meat of what you were asking about. I think that if you had lived your whole life in a small town and you knew everybody, everybody knew everybody. Maybe it's a little uncomfortable sometimes because everybody knows all your dirt, but also they all know who you are, and you have these interconnections and familial connections. You grew up with people. Everywhere you go you're just waving hi to everybody because everybody knows everybody.   Daniel: (34:59) Then I transplant you to a new place, big city let's say, and you don't know anybody. You would have a low level anxiety taking place because you would be alien to that place, and all of your connections that gave you stability and strength, they're gone. You're now in this fragile position because of the vulnerability of that. Now extrapolate that metaphor out and it's like here you are on planet earth, but you only know other humans. You don't know plants, you don't know fungi, you don't know animals. You don't know how to survive in your environment. You don't know how to source your own food, and you're totally reliant on these systems that provide you with your sustenance. Then you keep learning about, wow, not only are these systems really delicate and prone to failure and wow, that's kinda weird.   Daniel: (35:47) But also like, wait, they're also super toxic in the sense that we're poisoning this food and we're poisoning the landscape in which the food comes from and we're poisoning the watersheds. Wait a second, like this wheat was genetically modified with gamma radiation. Wait, what? This isn't just like healthy natural food? You start realizing, "Wow, I'm dependent on systems that are really fragile, super destructive to the earth and on top of it, are not good for me, and I don't even know how to solve that except through tons of money spent on really expensive products that start to encumber me." It starts to get a little bit, I think what happens is we have this low level anxiety. I think you see that anxiety projected out into the world in the form of apocalypse media, which is like a whole genre of media that most of us are kinda drawn a little bit to.   Daniel: (36:36) Whether it's Mad Max or it's The Walking Dead or it's like prepper stuff or it's whatever it is, or survival stuff. Shows about people living on the frontier of Alaska. Why are there so many dramatic reality shows where people are sent into nature naked and afraid, or they're sent into nature to survive on an island with each other and then they dramatically compete to see who's the survivor? We have so much of this media being pumped out because it speaks to the part of us that feels vulnerable on our own planet, because we don't actually know. It's not really about, "Can Joe survive the next episode?" It's not really about that. It's about can I survive and we're using him as a surrogate. We know that we can't survive and that freaks us out a little bit. The answer is not a whole bunch of cool Bear Grills survival skills where you have like some big bowie knife and you can pee in a snakeskin instead of a canteen.   Daniel: (37:32) It's not about those things. It's about for me, how many species am I familiar with that I know that are food for me? So that when I walk down my street or I drive down the road, I look out the window and go food, food, food, food, food. The difference for me of a maple tree to somebody who doesn't produce maple syrup, it's just night and day. When I look at a maple tree, I know that I can pull a gallon of sugar out of that tree next year. It's like one little step less afraid that I am internally and then it's like, the Oak trees. Like I can pull acorns off of those. That's food for me. Okay it's a little bit more confidence. Squirrels, that's food for me and I love that animal and that animal and I have a relationship. Then you start adding in all this stuff. I know where the clams are, I know where the Periwinkles are. Okay, I know how to catch fish out of that river.   Daniel: (38:26) Before you know it, you start having all these interconnections. It's like being back in that small town where you knew everybody. Earth starts to be this safe place for you because you're anti-fragile. You have this network that makes you robust. You're like, "You know what? It wouldn't matter to me if it did go Mad Max. I know where everything is. I don't care if there's a problem in the banking system. I don't care if there's a problem with the computer systems. I don't care if there's a three week shutdown because of a tsunami that takes out the grid." All those things that people talk about, it's like I'd just be good. I don't mean there'd be no hardship, but I'm saying like all those fears start to like go away and you have this sense of relaxation into your home, which is the earth.   Daniel: (39:12) I think people lack that so much and they fear that nature is so hostile. It's interesting with Australia to me because it's like this place from which all these shows come that we see here in the West about how dangerous the land, the 10 deadliest snakes. We got this whole croc hunter image of Australia of like this dangerous place. But then I'm sure people over there see shows about us about Alaska and it's like, "Oh my God, Grizzly Bears and Polar Bears," and all this stuff. It's like we just have this obsession with how dangerous nature is. It's like, man, it is, if you don't know how to coexist with it, but we know.   Mason: (39:48) That's interesting. Even just here in Byron, it's like even city slickers, I grew up in the city, always coming to the beach. Most times I'd be coming and visit here, which is now in my home. You're going to see a brown snake go across the path on your way to the beach in one way or another. You're going to find these red back spiders, and you're going to have huntsmen in your house. People go, "Holy shit, that's a huntsman" and even a city slicker, you're like, "Yeah, that's fine. They're okay as long as they're on the wall, his name's Pete, he's a friend." That's something I do appreciate about Australia. There's certain pockets through Maine and Connecticut that you can see especially seeing New Zealand, there's this ensconced connection to the natural world. As we know if you leave even the tiniest gap, nature's going to start creeping in, and then it's going to be easy to repopulate your in a world with those connections. That low level anxiety is insane.   Mason: (40:51) I mean just here, the amount of like distinction we need to make around people going like, "Right, I read that reishi is really good for anxiety, so I take reishi." It's like, well, let's take a couple of steps back. We're completely stepping out of this, "I've got a problem give me a pill," mentality, and we need to create this fabric of a personal culture and a family culture. That can, as you said, it's like, it might be this seemingly like rough, wild world, but when you do step into it, it's this inner cushioning, and this inner easing that you have because you've gained a genuine connection.   Mason: (41:30) When you were just talking about like, I assume is survivor just then, and having our experience of being able to survive through Bear Grills or through Tom surviving the next day. That's virtual reality. We're talking about the goggles coming on and us tapping out. It's on. It's a pivotal point not to get sensationalist about it, but most of us as we will be in most times of our lives, life is on and then we're at pivotal points most of the time. We do have really big choices and opportunities to take with our personal culture right now.   Daniel: (42:03) Bigger and bigger choices coming very soon. I'd like to talk about that a second. I want to add one more piece, which is in the raw food culture, which I think a lot of people don't understand how interwoven the raw food culture kinda got what psychedelic drugs too. Because those two things became very interwoven.   Mason: (42:22) Massively.   Daniel: (42:23) Massively. That culture started to get a little... those medicines are so powerful. Abused you can get pretty far out on a limb with them in your thinking. Things will feel extremely real to you that have basis and truth, but maybe aren't actually functional out in the world always. Pieces of truth. Sometimes things are true implicitly but not explicitly. It's true that we're all one internally, implicitly. Explicitly there are people who will kick your door down and hold you at gunpoint, and kill your family sometimes. Hate to say it, but that happens it's happening right now somewhere. Yet we're also all one.   Daniel: (43:08) What's happening in the explicit world and what's happening in the implicit world, they're not always the same. It's like that with the medicines you can get far out in your thinking like that the implicit reality you're experiencing that those medicines open you to is the explicit world, so you can get a little bit confused. I was thinking of just now as we were talking about a book series that some of the friends of mine in that culture were reading. I just know the name of the first book was Anastasia. Do you know these books?   Mason: (43:37) Absolutely. There's Anastasia and the other channeling texts.   Daniel: (43:44) These books people who aren't aware it's like they come out of Russia I believe, or at least they claim to and their stories about this culture in Russia where maybe in Siberia or something, where these people are living in like pure harmony with animals and with nature. All these really interesting stories. Well people I knew were taking those as anthropological reports. They were believing that those were true stories, and that this was anthropology. I would try to stop and say, “Hey listen, there are actual people scientists called anthropologists who study indigenous peoples on their landscape and this stuff is bullshit that you're reading. It's fairy tales. It's not real.” That's not real. People would be aggressively angry with me. They wanted that to be real. They wanted to know that squirrels were bringing Anastasia her nuts.   Daniel: (44:32) They wanted that stuff to be real. On one end, you have people who think nature is this ultra-dangerous place where around every corner something's about to gobble you up and you need to hide in your home. On the other side you have people who are like... I've been studying bear attacks lately because I'm around a lot of bears and I'm just curious like, what happens? Why does it happen? It's interesting that you sometimes have people who are so on the other end that they'll actually provoke an animal attack on themselves because they believe like, "No, me and this bear are friends." It's like, man you can get confused on that side too. It's like the brown snake is not your enemy, but he's also not necessarily your friend. You coexist on the planet. You have different agendas and you try not to meet in a negative way, but you also don't try to unnecessarily hug him either.   Daniel: (45:24) Now, some people get away with it, right for a while. Like who is your homeboy out of Australia, Steve Erwin. Got away with it for a while and then he gets a sting ray stinger through his heart. It's like you also learn a respect for nature too when you're part of the food chain. Because you start to understand every time you kill an animal, you take an animal's life and you open that animal up and you see its insides you are met face to face with mortality. You're met very quickly face to face with what your organs look like, and how you're a made of meat too. That there are things that'll be just as happy to consume you whether they're microbiotic or macrobiotic. You're like, both things are true. Nature is a lot safer than a lot of people think, and nature can be also a lot colder than a lot of people think. There's some Buddhist thing going on here. It's like some middle path   Mason: (46:22) Even like with TCM and that's what we talk a lot about these theories, these Taoists theories and it seems very poetic and romantic and clinical as well. It's a Yin transforms Yang. Yin Yang Wuxing, Yin Yang and the five phases of energy, it doesn't go beyond this that we're fucking talking about right now. It's very basic. We can get out of our head with it and experience it, but how far do we go down that rabbit hole of the magical thinking when it comes to far out.   Mason: (46:58) That definitely was a bit of a... I could have kept on going down that world and stayed functional in my personal egoic inner knowing. That I know the reality of what's going on in this world and despite the fact that I know that it's not appropriate for me to talk about it, these people just are not tapped in. One day they'll wake up and realise what I know internally. You can go really far with it. I didn't go so far down with the psychedelics. I definitely had a few dieter's, and will continue to when I can find I can have some grounding in terms of the appropriateness of-   Daniel: (47:28) Has its place like any medicine has its place.   Mason: (47:31) Absolutely, and the calling. I feel like we all, some of us dive into it and then step back and mature in our approach and appropriateness.   Daniel: (47:42) Or accept the healing of the medicine and don't just go to the medicine all the time. Because sometimes you just hit it and hit it, and it's like, "Hey man, how about you take 20 years and integrate some of that?"   Mason: (47:53) I love that you went two decades with that as well. That's it. Because that's an appropriate amount of time to integrate it. Well and what's giving you the medicine? Is it your chop wood, carry water, meek, mundane, day to day. That's what Buddhism is anyway. You can keep chopping wood, keep carrying water, get a little pop, get enlightened for a second. Let it go. Keep fucking going.   Daniel: (48:14) We have this happening on an experiential level too. I want to tie that in there. You were talking before like about how far out you can get with something. Sometimes we need a litmus test, like a reality test to check. Have I gotten too far out? For me what that became was like, well can I actually feed myself? Let me try to explain. I was at Burning Man, the big party right in Nevada. It's pretty far out. This is over a decade ago, maybe about a decade ago. I'm there and everybody's vibe is like, "Oh, this is the new model of humanity. This is how we can live in harmony together." I'm looking around like, "No, you're on a lunar plateau right now. There's no food here." Like you're going to live this way you brought all your food. Here's a test, are we really a tribe? Okay, let's feed ourselves, can you?   Daniel: (49:14) Or are you super reliant on these external systems that you say you're destroying, but you're actually still completely like nursing off of it? I find like this is really fake. The same thing happens in the medicine circles to a degree too. "No we can just live like this forever." It's like, "Yeah, you're going to get up tomorrow and you're going to go to the supermarket." You say you're stepping away from the system with this stuff, but you're only doing it up here. But who's chopping the wood and who's carrying the water? That's what it's really about. Your enlightenment, if you're not chopping wood and carrying water, your enlightenment isn't integrated. That I think is what I love about hunting and gathering. It's my chopping wood, carrying water. It's how I make sure that it keeps my feet on the ground.   Daniel: (50:00) Because I have one of those brains that wants to take me up into the clouds all the time. That real airy sense of exploring ideas is what I get most excited about. It's that earthy groundedness of, "Okay, I'm going to go out today and get food, and it's going to be challenging, and it's going to take time, and I'm going to have to utilise. I'm going to get into that discomfort you were talking about. I'm going to come face to face with what I don't know." Sometimes it's hard because I don't know what somebody who's done this their whole life would know. I am forced back to the ground.   Daniel: (50:33) That is I think really important for some people because it's like they've cut loose all the ballasts and they've rocketed up to 70,000 feet, and from up there, they're not really contributing very much. They think they are by just being, man like, "I'm contributing my vibe." It's like, "Yeah why don't you come down here and carry some of this wood with us?"   Mason: (50:54) My absolute favorite conversation. For people that don't know what we're talking about, I've been there going like reading the Pleiadian channeling texts getting to this. It gets confusing when you go and hang out with some of the local mob, the indigenous mob, and they will point to the Pleiades and say, where do you come from? That's where we're from. We're from the Pleiades. Then you get these modern interpretations of some of the rock art and you see the Biami, creator Biami standing on what is possibly a rocket ship until you go fuck.   Mason: (51:30) There's some like hieroglyphs here and you go, "Right, these hieroglyphs show DNA, did the Pleiadians come down and seed our DNA here?" Then there's like a little depiction and a modern interpretation of a spaceship coming down and falling into those waters between like Gosford and Sydney. This exists, and you start going into this inner world and going, "This storytelling's got something to it. I'm going to make that my exact reality on the outside world, and that completely skyrockets you."   Daniel: (52:03) The people who are telling you that will also chase like a giant porcupine down and pull it out of the ground and butcher it and share it in the tribe. It's like they will chop wood and carry water. I'm way more open to hearing that stuff from somebody who can demonstrate that they have integrated it. That's one of the things about indigenous peoples around the world, is that they have creation stories, creation myths, or sometimes what they say are their histories too, that are pretty far out to us, but they can demonstrate the viability of their worldview through their ability to live sustainably on the earth.   Daniel: (52:37) But when people who are trying to demonstrate the validity of their worldview but can't do that, it's like, "Well, I'm pretty suspect. Go back, integrate so that you can actually live here in some sustainable way, then I'm more open to your ideas." What like an Aboriginal person from Australia has to say has a lot more merit to me because they've got 60, 70,000 years of proving it. They've proved it probably longer than just about anybody who left Africa. I'm all ears. Show us how. But when somebody comes from Burning Man like that and they're telling me that stuff. I'm like, "Man, you don't even know how to like do your own laundry, your mom's still doing it."   Mason: (53:18) I think we're talking about the difference between someone that's just like, it's that same escapism. I'm going to get these beliefs and I feel superior and I'm going to become a missionary to these-   Daniel: (53:31) That's super dangerous man. That's super dangerous when you start thinking like… That was one of the things that I had to face when I started to hunt and fish. Foraging a little less so that world's a little different. But learning to hunt and fish man, I had to go speak to men who had fathers a lot of the times. Because I grew up without a father so I'm part of that culture, which is so common now in the developed world, especially as we see the breakdown of the family structure. Now, with such an emphasis on personal freedom, we'll see more and more of that probably, unfortunately, right. A lot of hunting and fishing least here in North America is passed on patrilineally. You learn it from your dad or your uncles or something. If you have a break in that like I did, you don't learn it at all. That's not to say that women don't hunt and fish, but they tend to not be the ones who pass that knowledge on at least in the past.   Daniel: (54:29) I would have to go in front of men who I did not understand and they didn't understand me. It's like I'm showing up with my man bun and my five toed shoes, and I want to do everything alternative to how they do it, because I know my ways are better. They're like, "Yeah, well, we actually get this done." Again, it's that same thing I was talking about before. They would have these political ideas, they would have religious ideas, they would have social ideas that were like, I thought I was superior to. And over time, I realised, that's like a really interesting type of armor that I was wearing. I was using health practices and ideas of consciousness as a shield, so as not to have to interface with some of the pricklier parts of reality that I didn't like. The parts of me that wanted the Anastasia reality. These guys were like, "Well get the fuck out of here acting like that."   Daniel: (55:18) Slowly, I had to learn how to humble myself to people I had thought I was superior to. Then realise like, these are the people who can teach me. This has really, really turned me around in a big way. I needed this bad. I was pretty far out there, because getting on stages and talking to thousands of people and having a podcast and all that stuff where you get this little bit of internet celebrity and you think you're sort of a big deal. Then you realise like, well in your small town nobody knows what a podcast is, and they don't care. If you want to hunt with them, this is the conditions and this is the way they're going to let it happen. You're like, have to be meek and humble.   Daniel: (55:55) I mean that was hard, and it was so good. My bullshit meter has I don't know has moved several steps back towards center because it was way out there. My bullshit meter was more like, "Well if you don't know about like green juice and you don't know about coffee enemas, and you don't know about six day meditation retreats in silence, then you don't know anything." It's like, dude, here I was way off the mark.   Mason: (56:23) You're not paranoid about parasites all the time.   Daniel: (56:25) You're not worried about what they're doing [inaudible 00:56:27]. Now it's cool though, as I feel it's that third eye idea. It's like I've got a left eye and a right eye, and they are connected to different hemispheres and those brain hemisphere see the world in kind of opposite ways. One sees the world pretty analytically, and one sees the world pretty artistically. There's a merging in the center where you take those two worldviews and you bring them together. Well, I was spending all my time with just those right-brained people, and I was avoiding all those left brain people like they were wrong. Now I got a lot of those people in my life and they've brought balance to the other side, so that I feel now like I can walk a middle path. If you lose that, you might think you're on a middle path not realising you're all the way to one side or the other because you've lost the contrast.   Daniel: (57:17) Now I've got these people who are some of my very best and closest allies and friends, who are not people I would have necessarily connected with before, but they have opened my world up to things that I didn't know what I was missing in my life. I haven't jettisoned all the other stuff I've just for every far out idea you need some earthy idea to balance it and counter oppose it. That's really important. What we're seeing right now, it's probably a very different political landscape in Australia than it is here in the States right now. But I'm sure from the outside you can see what's happening here, which is like this soft civil war, this cold civil war that's happening here with these oppositional ideas. I get frustrated because we call one left wing and call one right wing. I'm always like, "Man, every plane I see has like both wings."   Daniel: (58:02) That's how it flies. You cut one off, like, "No, we're just going to be the left wing plane." It's like we'll crash and vice versa we're just the right wing. It's like you need both. They're supposed to keep each other in balance. What's happening now is they're saying, no, only this or only this. So similarly, this is a holistic, and what's cool about that is just every mystery teaching ever is always this. Whatever place you look where there's a mystery teaching, it talks about these two oppositional forces that bring each other into, and finding that balance point in the center. I think when you have this hunting gathering component, it gives a platform for exploring consciousness in a way that you never get too far off balance.   Mason: (58:47) Dude, and that's why I love your work so much. I mean, when someone would go like, "Hey, so what does Vitalis do?" It's like, "Well, I'm going to tell you all the things." It's at some point it's experiential. What you're talking about is holding that consistent ground of integration and sharing, for lack of a better word, principles in and around these hardcore ideas that can be applied actually to your life. But that's why, if you are going to the supermarket, if you're going to farmer's markets, if you're doing a little bit of foraging, it doesn't really matter if you listen to the podcast. The WildFed podcast I've dug into a little bit, I'm really enjoying it so far. But the show's relevant wherever you're at, and you'll really get that. It's like, yes, it is absolutely about the hunting and foraging and the fishing.   Mason: (59:34) But no matter where you're at, it's not just this bullshit idea of like, "Yeah but it can work for anybody. "It is because underlying are principles that you can… Everything you've just talked about nailed it. For someone like myself that is fanatical and does shoot off into the heavens quite often as well, that's been a nice stable ground. It helps, kind of, me feel comfortable in the direction that I'm at. I always have people coming towards me who have cracked out in one particular identity and they're trying to integrate. It's interesting trying to explain what that is. I really, really appreciate that. I'm sure it gets sung a lot, but being there and sharing authentically to help us continue to integrate and not go into the excesses that can cause pathology when we are having these beautiful intention to become healthy, that's really appreciated.   Daniel: (01:00:31) We are in that time where people, like, pathology around every corner right now. We have to be really careful. There's never been a more confusing time in history. I feel like the fundamental thing that's going to be, I mentioned it earlier, I feel like big choices are coming. Because pretty soon the distinction between reality and augmented reality and virtual reality are going to get so gray, it's going to be so difficult to sort out, not for us, man, we grew up in reality. But the next generation of kids are going to grow up in augmented reality and the next generation of kids are going to grow up in a virtual world.   Daniel: (01:01:08

Every time winter comes around, the number of traffic accidents increases. MEMIC Loss Control Director Randy Klatt shares how you can drive to save lives, time and money, despite the conditions around you and the actions of others. Since his experiences in emergency medicine and as an active duty Navy pilot and aircraft crash investigator, Klatt has been on a mission to prevent the tragic consequences of unsafe attitudes and behavior. “As a 20-year-old paramedic responding to calls for help, I quickly realized that human failure is behind the majority of injuries,” says Klatt. “As a safety professional I know there are no accidents, only predictable outcomes. No one wants to be hurt, but many do not understand how preventable injuries really are. Peter Koch:  Hello listeners, and welcome to the Safety Experts podcast. Winter driving can be a big challenge and we see an increase in the number of traffic accidents every winter. So today we're going to dig deep into what it takes to be a safe driver this winter. For today's episode, Winter Driving Safety. I'm speaking with Randy Klatt, director of Region II Loss Control at MEMIC to be a better driver this winter. Randy has over 40 years of experience working in industries where safety is critical to success. His career spans emergency medicine, active duty Navy pilot, commercial airline pilot and an aviation safety instructor at the university level. Randy has worked with MEMIC since 2003 and is the current director of Region II at Loss Control, leading a team of consultants serving the Central and Southern Maine area. Randy, welcome to the podcast today. Randy Klatt: Thank you, Peter. It's a pleasure to be here. Peter Koch: Fantastic. So, we're gonna jump right into it. So, I appreciate you being here, but we're gonna throw a question at you right off the bat. Randy Klatt: Okay. Peter Koch: Does the environment actually cause traffic accidents, driving accidents? Randy Klatt: No. Peter Koch: Thank you very much. Randy, I appreciate you coming today. Randy Klatt: That's all I have to say for today. Peter Koch: Why not? Cause you see it all there all the time like people talk about, well, it was the snow, or it was the fog, or it was the rain. I hydroplaned. I skidded. I did this and the car flipped over. I hit the car in front of me. Whatever happened there, there's always a this before that. Randy Klatt: Yeah, there always is. And I see claims injuries like that all the time. Often there's verbiage in the claims description that says something like the car left the roadway, the car flipped over, the car skidded on the ice. And of course, my immediate thought is I don't think the car does those things without the driver putting it in that position. So, some people would say that, oh, this is an unreasonable expectation that I'm being way too hard on people. Well, from my perspective, no, weather does not cause accidents. In fact, we don't call them accidents. Some people do. I prefer to call them predictable outcomes if you are not driving for the conditions, it's almost inevitable that we're going to have some problems. So, I grant you that we are human beings. Humans make mistakes. I could make a mistake. I could end up in a fender bender this winter because I made a mistake. And so, I'm not looking for blame.  I'm not saying that people who are in traffic accidents in the wintertime are, are less than capable of driving, or that I blame them for all the problems. That's not really the point. The point is that it is preventable if we do the right things and that driving, especially in the winter, is very hazardous. There's, there's no doubt about that. The weather does make road conditions more challenging. It does present a hazard that isn't there in the summertime. But if we address it and if we do something about it, we're much, much more likely to get to where we're going and get home safely without any incidents. So, my answer is, and this is the way I would like people to look at it overall, really for any injury, any accident, any incident that occurs, it's preventable.  And if I look at it that way, it's a preventable situation. That means that I have to take responsibility to do the prevention piece. And if I do that, I'm much more likely to be safe throughout all my activities.  If I look at it as "Awe gee, it is raining or it's snowing today, the roads icy, I'm probably going to get in an accident today. It's inevitable."  Then I'm much more likely to do just that. So, let's look at it as all preventable and that will go a long way towards actually driving safely. So that's my very long answer to a very short question, but it's a very fundamental question to our topic today. Weather doesn't cause it. People do. Peter Koch: Yeah, I think that's a really good point and a great start. So, would you say, and if we think about driving overall, and we're talking about environment now as a contributor, not as the cause, but a potential contributor to an accident.  And in that light, could you say that driving is a series of conscious and unconscious decisions that we make to get from point A to point B? Randy Klatt: I would say that's an accurate description. I would hope that most things are conscious. But yes, we get into a mindset of we've done this a million times. We know how to drive. If you're an experienced driver that's certainly true. So, some of our behaviors are, I think you could say they are subconscious or almost autonomous. We don't really think so much about what we're doing. So, if you've ever missed your exit, you've driven there 100 times, but suddenly you drive by and you go, oh gee whiz, I suppose to get off there. That's should tell you that you're driving autonomously there. You were you weren't really driving, actually, Sir Isaac Newton was in the driver's seat at that moment, and you were just along for the ride. So, we do a good portion of that. And if you happen to be doing that when the road conditions aren't very good. Now we've given up our responsibility as the driver. We've succumbed to the conditions and basically said, "Well, if it happens, it happens." And that's certainly not a philosophy that I would like any driver to adopt because I don't want him hitting me either. So, we really have to engage more carefully in driving overall. Just look at the numbers. 40,000 people a year dying in traffic accidents in this country, 13 million crashes each year, about half of those resulting in police reporting and about almost 2 million people who are injured in traffic accidents every year. So, this is something that costs society over $250 billion dollars every year. It's ridiculous that in today's day and age, we haven't gotten a handle on this. And when you add weather into it, the tendency is just to say, well, it was weather. That's what caused it. And you usurp your own responsibility. And that's not right. Peter Koch: No, not at all. Not at all. So, if weather isn't the problem but the person's the problem is the answer just autonomous vehicles should we just take the driver right out of it?  Or what are the responsibilities that a driver would have in order to keep that vehicle going forward? Randy Klatt: Now, very good point. I think remember Randy said this in 2000, whatever this is now, that yes, autonomous vehicles are probably going to be the predominant vehicle on the road and in the future, I don't know when that's going to be, I don't know how many years it'll be, but that's the way we are going, clearly. And if an autonomous vehicle takes the person out of the out of the formula, out of the equation, we are going to have safer roadways. There's no doubt about that. If everybody is in an autonomous vehicle. So, the way I usually do that analogy is I come from aviation. That was my background. I flew in the military for a long time. I flew commercial airlines. And knowing aviation safety like I do, I know that, oh take World War II for example, we lost almost as many pilots in crashes as we did in combat. Aviation had not developed into a very sophisticated science even at that point. We're only talking 60, 70 years ago. Look at aviation today. We have almost no crashes. I would challenge anyone listening here to tell me when the last airline crash was in the United States from a U.S. carrier. And you're going to find, hmmmm I don't really remember. We've lost three people in 10 years in major airline crashes in the United States, and one was a freight carrier. Both pilots perished and the other was Asiana Airlines in San Francisco. So, we've made and that was a fatality, unfortunately, on the ground. A person was hit by the fire truck as they evacuated the aircraft. So, when we look at those numbers you know, the millions and millions of people that fly every year, and we've made that industry extremely safe.  We've, we've done that through for the most part through automation, through technology. And I can see the same thing happening in driving that we have now developed adaptive cruise control and blind spot monitoring systems and an automatic emergency braking system and all these things that are in theory making our driving safer. And I think they are to a point. But what I don't want to see happen is that the driver starts to give up their responsibility as a driver because they know the technology will take care of them. And so, when we do see airplane crashes today, it's because that's exactly what's happened. I flew 737s. I didn't fly the Max 8, but I flew the 500 model. And I can tell you that a pilot who knows what he's doing, is well trained, would not fly that thing into the ground no matter what the system was doing. So today, when we have drivers who are relying on technology in the same way, we're gonna have problems. Fatality numbers are actually going up. The last three or four years, they've gone up every year. Yet technology is getting better. So, there's something else going on there and it has to do with the driver. And we still have to focus on the driver. So, until we can get to a completely autonomous vehicles almost to the point like what we have in autonomous airplanes. There's still a pilot in the seat. But you can, if you can pull back on the yoke and get the airplane off the ground and push a button, you can be an airline pilot. I shouldn't say that, that'll probably offend some of our audience and maybe alarm others who are on airplanes right now.  But we've become computer monitors more than we have than we are pilots. And it makes it very safe because they're very dependable airplanes. But until we get to that point with cars, we have to depend on that driver. And of course, this day and age, we are very dependent. And so that driver has to take that all very seriously. And if you put on your adaptive cruise control and just sit back and relax. But the weather isn't very good. The car doesn't know what the road conditions are. It'll turn itself off if visibility is and isn't high enough.  But if the road is, you know, it's thirty-four degrees outside and there are places where it's just at freezing and there's a little fog or mist and the roads a little icy. The car does not know that. That's a perfect condition for setting you up to crash. And because you took yourself out of the equation and you're going to say that it was the ice that caused it. And that's just not right. Peter Koch: So, a lot of it comes down to the awareness of the driver of the surroundings and that adaptive cruise control example that you brought up, I think is fascinating.  I have it in one of the vehicles that I drive, and you could be on the highway travelling at highway speeds right within the speed limit, set the cruise control. And before you know it, you're behind someone who is going 10 miles an hour below the speed limit. And you never even knew that the car slowed down. You're just maintaining the distance. But people in the passing lane are zipping past you, and then all of a sudden you go, he's going too slow. So, what do you do? You pull out. You go around them, and you override that regardless sometimes of the conditions. Because if you're focused on a conversation that made you not pay attention to what the vehicle is doing and how it's engaging with the road, you probably haven't paid enough attention to your environmental surroundings to know that how fast you're pulling out is actually good for the environmental conditions that you're there. So that technology is super helpful, but it can lull us into that sense of safety that we still have responsibility for, ultimate responsibility for still lies within the driver, which is a great point that you made before. Absolutely right.  So, it always comes down to, as we've said many times in history, it's the nut behind the wheel. It's the driver of the vehicle. You are responsible. And it's an awesome responsibility. Now, in this country in particular, we take it for granted. Everybody does everything in their cars and most families have multiple cars. And we see generally one person in every car on the highway. And we it's just the society that we have. We're big on cars. And that's what is convenient. And that's I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that, except that we do take it for granted the responsibility of actually operating the vehicle. So, I think about your average adult is 30 years old. How much driver training has he actually gotten? Probably went through driver's ed training at 16 to get his permit. And once he got that license, the training stopped with the exception of the OJT that we get every day. And you just hope that the mistakes you make don't result in something horrible. And that's probably not a very good way to run a system. I was actually talking to another consultant just yesterday who lived in Germany for 16 years. You got the Autobahn, right? We have no speed limits.  Their fatality rate is actually fairly high on the Autobahn. But overall, better than United States. And we figured, well, gee, what's the deal there? And he explained very carefully, said it's the driver training. It's the training they have to go through to get a license. You have to be 18 before you can even apply for a license. And it's very rigorous and it costs a lot of money. So, people are very appreciative of the license once they get it. And they're very well-trained as opposed to the United States, where we see it more as an innate right. And of course, you're gonna drive. And if you're 18 in the United States and all we have to do is pass that written test and convince that, inspector, for that 10-minute drive that you're not going to kill anybody. You got a license. You don't really need any training. You know, what's a yellow light do? That's about all you need to know.  And that's just not right. And now we put him out there in a snowstorm and expect them to drive well. I think the realistic expectation is that we're going to have some problems with that unless we really focus on it. Peter Koch: So let's talk a little bit about how that how the road conditions, the winter road conditions specifically will affect the driver and the choices that they'll have to make in order to keep the vehicle going at a steady rate and making it happen safely. Randy Klatt: Well, we can always look to the hierarchy of safety controls, which might be another podcast topic of in and of themselves. But the first thing in the hierarchy is always to eliminate the hazard. So why would I go out in a snowstorm if I don't have to? That's the number one. I can best control my car if it's in the garage. I don't I don't have to worry about those conditions. Now, I understand that's not always a possibility. And that people do have to be places at times. And so, I don't mean to make a joke out of that by saying we can all stay home. But at least in the northeast where we live, where snow is expected and it's common and it often comes heavy, we have darn good snow clearance systems out there.  And that if you wait an hour or an hour and a half, you'll have a much better environment to drive in than you would have if you just went out your normal time.  So maybe you need to need to delay your trip for a little while. Maybe it's work from home for a few for an hour and then head in later, you know, something like that. So, look to eliminate that hazard in the first place. Inevitably, we'll find ourselves out in the bad weather. So, then what are you going to do? Well, speed is the number one cause of all accidents, and it's certainly going to be magnified when you have poor road conditions. When you think about tires and road surface contact, the tire on the road is the only thing that's touching the road, we hope, of your vehicle. So, if the road is contaminated, so we have ice, we have snow, standing water, whatever it is, we're gonna have less control of that vehicle.  That's just inevitable. And if that's the case, then I darn well better slow down because if I'm driving 60 in a normal day, dry pavement, I better be backing that down somewhat in winter conditions because I know that I'm not going to be able to control my vehicle either in maneuvering, cornering, turning or accelerating or stopping. All those are affected adversely by adverse road conditions. So, number one avoid the hazard.  Number two slow down. Why are we all in such a hurry? Number three would be increase that following distance, increase that safety cushion that you have around you. Because inevitably you will take longer to stop. Other drivers are not going to be so attentive. They are going to take longer to stop. Let's just give ourselves a little bit more room so that we have more time and the car's gonna be able to react a little bit better, have more time to, more space around to react. So those are my three top things. Avoid it. Slow down. Increase your following. Peter Koch: That's fantastic. How does, let's talk a little bit about the sort of the dynamics of that only part, the only part of the road, at least we hope. The only part of the vehicle, at least we hope that is touching the ground are the tires. And how do the winter road conditions affect the tires and maybe a little bit about the different types of tires that are out there? Randy Klatt: Sure. So, I think it's pretty clear to everyone that that road surface contact with the rubber of your tire is what is going to control the vehicle. That's the coefficient of friction that we need to accelerate and to stop and to control it in a turn. And all those things. So as that changes, if you add even something as little as a twenty fifth of an inch of water to the surface of a roadway. Now we don't have nearly the tire contact with the road that we do on a dry surface. So, if you make that little bit of water ice, well, now of course, we have even a lower coefficient of friction. We have less control over what's gonna happen between those two surfaces. So, contamination on the road is a critical element in being able to control my vehicle. And so, then we can, since we can't necessarily control the conditions of the roadway. Now, I did say earlier that if we just wait a little while, the road will probably be better. I always think that if you find yourself out on the road following a snowplow or right behind it or right in front of it, you're probably out there at the wrong time. Let them do their job first and then go out there. That's probably a better way to go. All right, so given that limitation, we can't really control the roadway. So, the only thing I can control then from a contact standpoint, from tire road topic, which is what we're on right now, is the tire itself. So vast majority of vehicles these days we're using all season radial tires.  An all-season tire, just as it implies, is designed for all seasons. It has some performance in hot weather. It has some performance in wet and has some performance in cold or freezing snow conditions. It's not ideal for any one of those. By definition, it's an all-season tire. So, for those climates where we see minimal snow a couple times a year, you might get a little bit of this or that. All season tires is probably appropriate. But for those areas of the country where we see a lot of snow or we see a winter, that can be severe. You might see ice. Now we're probably talking a winter tire, a snow tire, something that's designed for those conditions. And they are vastly different. And we can talk about those differences, if you'd like. Peter Koch: Yeah, I think that would be good. Touch it a little bit about the difference in construction and design of that all-season tire versus the winter tire. And what makes the winter tire a better choice when you know that you're going to encounter these environments more frequently? Randy Klatt: Sure. So, there are innate differences in tread design, but also in material choice and in the rubber compounds that are used. So again, that all season tire is designed to last a long time. It's fairly harder compound. It is designed also though, for comfort because we want our car, you know, we're selling a new car and I want it to be quiet. If I'm riding in a car, if I buy a new car, I want it to be ride comfortably and quiet. And a lot of that depends on your tires. So, they are designed to last quite a while, to be OK in performance in all conditions and to provide comfort and quiet. Whereas a winter tire is really designed for just that. It's designed for worse conditions. So, it's going to have different tread block design. It will have more, more tread blocks that are separated by more space so that we can help avoid hydroplaning so that there's more clearance for snow and water to be dissipated. So, we have tread contact with the surface. There's going to be more siping on the tires all the way around to almost not to the sidewalls, but to the outer portion of the tires and siping. Are those small cuts in the tread blocks that you see? They look like cuts. There are little slits, so that they, they as the tire rolls around and contacts the surface, those Sipes allow the tread block to actually separate slightly and almost grip the road a little bit more. It's ah, imagine an animal that separates its toes and grips in a more efficient way. That's really what that siping does for a tire and a snow tire. And that's going to help increase that contact with the roadway. And then, so we got wider blocks, more tread depth, probably as typical winter tire will come with 10 to 13 thirty-seconds of tread depth to start with. So that's a significant amount of tread. And then lastly, it's a different metal or a different, excuse me, rubber compound. Like I said earlier, it's a softer compound. It's designed to be more supple in cold weather. Your all-season tire is going to harden up when it becomes really cold outside, becomes less flexible. So, less ability to actually stay supple when it contacts the roadway. So, a winter tire will do that for you, which is a great advantage. The reason we don't use those all year, of course, is for those things converse of what I said earlier about they all season tire. A winter tire is not going to last as long, it's a softer compound. So, it's going to wear out faster. You put a rubber tire, or a winter tire on your car in the summertime, it'll wear out very quickly. It's also louder, less comfortable. It's more like driving an all-terrain vehicle or something where you, you don't have nearly the comfort or the ride. So, the compromises that are made with the all-season tire are fine until you get to bad weather. Then I would definitely recommend going to a winter tire that is designed for just that. Peter Koch: And keeping on that line of technology and we have the tires that are the contact between the vehicle on the road and keeps us there. How does vehicle technology and all-wheel drive, smart technology for vehicles like that? How does that help keep that car on the road? Peter Koch: Well, certainly all, I think we all know all wheel drive, or four wheel drive is certainly an advantage in poor weather, but really only an acceleration in gripping the roadway as you're trying to accelerate or to move out to gain traction because you're separating the amount of friction that you need to develop. You're gaining from all four tires now so you can do the math by the square inches of tire contact and divide that by four instead of by two. So, we can really accelerate better you so you can get your car moving better, gets out of parking spots or up little hills or things like that in a more efficient fashion. So, all wheel drive's certainly an advantage in the wintertime. What it doesn't do is help you stop any quicker. So, what vehicle do you typically see in the median or, you know, down the hillside driving down the highway in the wintertime? It's generally a four-wheel drive of some kind.  Because some driver just thought I've got a four-wheel drive, I'm going. And yeah, they go, they just don't stop. So that's an overconfidence feature that sometimes comes with all-wheel drive. It will get going better, but we're not going to stop any better. The other feature we could talk about is antilock brakes. So, ABS systems are standard now and do a fantastic job of stopping a vehicle.  They're very efficient, especially on dry pavement. They'll stop you darn quick. But what they really do. Of course, the real design feature, the purpose of them is to keep those front wheels or steering wheels rolling. So, if I stand on that brake pedal for a panic stop, I'm going to feel the vibration of the pedal. I'm probably going to hear some awful sounding noise. And that's the computer system modulating the flow of brake fluid and preventing those front tires from locking up. They will come to a point where they almost stop and then they'll continue to roll. And then they'll almost stop, and they'll continue. So, they, the modulation of that is really important. That allows those front wheels to continue to turn so that I continue to have steering control. What it doesn't do is help you break any quicker. So, if I'm on a little downhill slope with snow and I step on the brake pedal, I'm going to feel like I'm not stopping because I'm gonna feel that vibration. The car is going to continue to roll and I feel like, oh, my gosh, the speed brakes don't work. I'm not stopping it. Well, you're not stopping any quicker. But what you do have is control of your steering. So, you're remaining in control of your vehicle rather than having it skid into a spin of some kind. So, control is the real advantage to the anti-lock brakes systems, but it will not necessarily help you stop quicker. So that's really important to know. The days when, when I was trained how to drive back a few years ago in driver's training, they would tell us to pump the brake pedal. That's what we used to do. You don't do that anymore. Do not do that when it comes down to anti-lock brakes.  You can stand on the brake pedal and that, those front tires will continue to turn. So, you continue to have steering control. Peter Koch: So, I think it's really interesting as we talk about tire technology, tread and construction, all-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, anti-lock brakes, the different systems and the newer vehicles that are designed to help us be safer in any environment. They are really there to help us maintain control of the vehicle. But in order to really do that, you have to understand the vehicle's limitations in the environment that you're trying to apply them. So, a winter tire versus an all-terrain tire, anti-lock brakes versus computer-assisted or all-wheel drive versus front wheel drive versus rear wheel drive versus four-wheel drive. And how do those things all interact? So, knowledge of the tool that you're using, as well as knowledge of the environment that you're using it in. And then the piece that we typically miss is the understanding our own limitations and how to apply those.  And how fast we react and all those different things. So, it comes right back to the person, the driver, the understanding, and the knowledge, the responsibility of the driver to be able to maintain control of that car. And essentially, those are you know, that is what is going to make us better drivers ultimately in the wintertime. So, let's talk again or a little bit more about those personal things that the driver needs to take into consideration when they are making choices out there on the road. So, what are some things, that are a disadvantage to the driver and maybe an advantage to the driver? Randy Klatt: Well, I would start with this... I was thinking of this as you were speaking just a minute ago here, Peter, about I would ask the question, when was the last time you as a driver actually read your owner's manual? And I can I can see your listeners right now rolling their eyes and saying, what owner's manual? And I ask that question because these cars are not, they're not my '57 Chevy where you just get in and go, because it really isn't a whole lot to it. We do have all this technology, which is fabulous. But you do have to know how to use it and what it will do and what it won't do. Ummm, I actually had a person tell me recently they turned off all of this because it was bugging them. And I said, well, what was going on? And the person said, it just continued to beep at me. And I couldn't, I didn't know what it was, so I turned it off. I thought, OK well, perhaps the answer might have been, why don't you look it up in your manual and actually figure out why it's doing what it's doing. And if you want to turn it off, that's certainly a choice you make as a driver. But understand what it's going to do for you and why you might want to leave it on. Peter Koch: It's funny you mentioned that. If I could just interject for a moment. Randy Klatt: Please. Peter Koch: So, my parents are getting on in age. They're in their 80s. My mom's not quite 80 yet, so she won't be happy when I say that, but yet she's still doing great. She still drives. And a couple of years ago, she got a brand-new car. Well, a leased car. First time ever and it had all the bells and whistles. So, you know, it had the adaptive cruise control and it had the lane avoidance. And so, we got in the car for the first time with her. And she, she kept saying, why is that beeping? Why is it beeping? Why? How do you shut it off? Same thing. She had no idea. And I was like, well, Mom, that's the indicator that you're crossing over the line. So, she was constantly with a tire on or over the white line, or then she would drift over to the center line and she wouldn't notice that because she'd be moving back and forth within the lane. So, once she figured that out, that that was an indicator, now it's she actually does a much better job staying within the lane and concentrating on that. But it took her a little while to get there. And I think we find that we have many older drivers these days. You have many of our parents, in order to stay to stay independent, want to maintain their license and they get a new car. And the last new car that they had and even that could be a used car. The last new car they had was made in the 80s or the 90s, and it had none of that. So, they don't know. And they'll just push the button to turn it off or they'll call, they'll call the dealership and ask him to turn off all those annoying buzzers. And of course, the dealership won't train them. They might just turn it off because that's the request from the customer. Randy Klatt: Absolutely right. Peter Koch: Before I move on from the story with my mom, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk more about how those, those items of technology in the car can assist us maintaining control in the wintertime.   **********************   Peter Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Randy Klatt, Director of Region 2 Loss Control at MEMIC. So, let's jump right back in with more questions. Before the break, we're talking about winter driving and vehicle technology. And we're just going through a story about how vehicle technology could be misunderstood, sometimes shut off because it's misunderstood, or it can actually be a benefit to those who can pay attention to it and understand what it's saying. So, let's talk a little bit more about the vehicle technology and how some of that adaptive technology can help us. Randy Klatt: You made a really good point there, Peter, referring to your mom. I'm afraid that's what sometimes the typical driver will do if you don't understand it. Turn it off and then it won't bother you, me anymore. And of course, then we're just defeating the advanced technology that we have. So, if cars are getting safer, we have to use what makes them safer. So, this is actually a user interface kind of discussion. Cars are safer with crumple zones and anti-lock brakes and, you know, and all those other technologies that are keeping us safer in a crash. But what can I really affect every day? What can I actually do to make my driving safer? And that might be include technology that's available to me as a user, as a driver. And for example, my car that I drive frequently has two levels of lane control assist. The first one will do just as you describe with your mother. It will beep at me and it will show an indicator on the dash that tells me I'm getting too close to the either side stripe of the road or to the centerline. And so that's the first step. That should tell me enough that should tell me all I need to know. That things should never go off. But if it does. Oh, my goodness. I got to get back to the center of the lane. The second thing that it would do if I continued to drift is it would actually control, control my car. It would actually turn my steering wheel back to the center of the lane. So, if you do really become distracted for an extended period of time, the car should be smarter than you are and should turn you back into the lane. And it will actually do that twice. It will control it once. And then if you don't touch the wheel and you start to drift away again, it'll control it a second time. And then if it becomes a third time, it will actually turn itself off and say, I'm sorry, I give up. You're beyond help. So, I like parts of that. I really enjoy, I appreciate the alert when it occurs. Ninety nine percent of time it's because I know that's where I am. I've moved over for some reason or I'm starting to change lanes on the highway, and I neglected to turn on my turn signal. Turn on your turn signal that it's not going to correct you, of course.  What I have actually turned off is the auto control back into the lane, though. I've done it for a purposeful reason. What I found was if I am approaching, for instance, a pedestrian or a cyclist on the shoulder, I want to move over for that person and I'm not going to jerk the wheel over and zip into a lane. I'm going to let the car drift slightly wider and I'm going to let them have more room as I think is appropriate. And assuming there's no car coming the other direction, I might actually approach that center line or even cross it slightly to give room for this pedestrian. Well, when I was doing that and I had the control system on, it steered me back into the lane because it didn't know there was a pedestrian there or trash cans on the side of the road, or whatever it is. So, I found it hard. It was taking me places I didn't really want it to go.  So, I turned that teacher off. But I did it knowingly and consciously and for a reason and not because it just annoyed me. So, use your technology.  Again, read that owner's manual, understand what it is trying to do for you and use it to your advantage. And if you don't like it for a specific reason, a logical reason, not just because I don't like that thing. I don't like being beeped at. Well, then certainly consider adjusting it. Something like adaptive cruise control can be a change. There are settings for how far behind the vehicle in front of you are. So set your following distance.  Course, what we always recommend is the standard three-second rule.  You see the car in front of you pass a sign or a pothole or stripe on the road or something. Count to yourself. One. One thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. You shouldn't be to that same point, that hole in the road or whatever before three seconds. That means you've got that three seconds of following distance behind that car in front of you, and that's really that cushion that you need. When we talk about the reaction times of the human being, it typically to perceive a hazard, understand what it is and then react to it. In other words, move your foot from the accelerator, the brake. Those two actions about a second to a second and a half for most people. If you're at highway speed that's 100, 150 feet you've just traveled, and you haven't done anything to stop your car yet. And if you're in winter conditions where the roadway surface might not be perfect, you've traveled that same distance, but now you're breaking, efficiency is gonna be reduced. So, you're stopping distance is far longer. So, we have to give extra room. So, in the wintertime, I might set that cruise control. Actually, let me take that back. If the road conditions are not very good. Shouldn't use cruise control because again, the car doesn't know that the road conditions aren't very good so it can get you into trouble. But what I will do is back off from that car in front of me and allow that extra following distance because I know I'm not going to be able to stop as quickly. So use the technology to help you if you choose to turn off some of it, you can do so, but don't ever give up your responsibility as a driver to understand what's in front of you, what's behind you and control your car despite the conditions around you. If we look at the definition of defensive driving from the National Safety Council, it's to drive to save lives, time and money despite the conditions and the actions of others. I can't control the drivers. I can't control the weather, but I can control my car. Peter Koch: Those are great points and really thinking about it. If you do drive defensively and not aggressively and there's been tons of studies out there, Mythbusters have done studies out there. The NTSB has done studies out there. Individual car companies have done studies out there about distracted driving, about aggressive driving. How it doesn't actually save time. It doesn't save money. It doesn't save productivity. And it certainly doesn't put you in a safe position to react to a mistake that another driver might make. And if we all reacted defensively or drove defensively, then there would be less mistakes to react to, which would be pretty amazing how efficient the system might actually work. And considering that for a second. Have you ever had the experience driving down the highway where all of a sudden you're driving at the speed limit 65, 70 miles an hour, wherever you are, whatever it is, and you go from there to 30 or 25 and you crawl around for 10 minutes, 15 minutes and you're still moving and you're expecting at some point time to see the reason why there has been a slowdown and all of a sudden traffic opens up and you're back to speed limits. And there's been no accident. There's been no road change. There's been no nothing else. And what's happened are people aren't driving defensively. They're reacting to the problems around you. And if you see brake lights in front of you and you're going really fast, you don't have a good cushion in front of you. You're applying your brake lights, which means the person behind you are applying their brake lights. And it just keeps backing up. And all of a sudden, there's a mile worth of slow down. Randy Klatt: Yes, a mile worth of hurry up and wait. It doesn't make a lot of sense. I see it all the time. When I'm in the right-hand lane, I'm looking down the roadway as everyone should. I'm trying to not just focus on that car in front of me, which is important for following distance, but I'm also looking well down the roadway, so I know what to expect. So, I see brake lights in the distance. I'm, of course, going to back off a little bit. I'm just going to start to slow down. And then there's the driver in the left-hand lane that zips by me going faster than the speed limit was in the first place. And there, you know, here we are a couple hundred yards later and he's jamming on his brakes because now he realizes that he's almost going to hit the car in front of him. I worked with a truck driving company that the owner of the company had 2 million accident free miles in his logbook, very experienced.  And he would like he told me that with his new drivers, what he'd like to do is he would drive from Maine down through New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut, down to New York, where they went for a lot of their stops. And he told that student driver and the new driver that he thought he bet that he could drive right through that whole area and never touch his brakes. And of course, none of the guys believed him that that could be possible. And he said he did it all the time because he understood flow. He understands traffic in front of them. He understands speed. He's not going to get there any quicker any way. So why accelerate brake, accelerate brake, if you can just very carefully maneuver through the through the roadway. Keep your following distances. You get there the same time you're beating up your car or your vehicle a lot less. You're using less gas. It just makes good sense. It's also less stressful because when everybody's in a hurry and they're all angry about delays and what might go on ahead of them, then they're angry at each other. And then we have road rage and just, just relax. It's OK. I'll get there about the same time you are anyway. And if you beat me by 30 seconds. Peter Koch: So be it. Randy Klatt: OK. You won the race. That's OK.  I'm going to get there, and I will have saved some money and I'll be a lot better mood when I get where I'm going. So, and when it comes to winter driving. Oh, my gosh. Now, now, let's add that road, those road conditions. So, all of that that I just described, you know, let's multiply that several times for winter driving because we're going to take longer to stop because we might have less visibility. It just makes sense that I'm going to back off a little bit more. Peter Koch: And that that behavior of accelerate brake, accelerate brake, accelerate brake, which happens often whether it's highway driving, primary road driving, secondary road driving really increases your chances of coming unstuck from the roadway.  When I step on the gas, there's a higher demand in order to keep the tires in place or to keep the tire's grip. There's a higher demand for a coefficient of friction when I brake and I have to brake hard, it's the same thing. So, road conditions have, could have road conditions could significantly affect the behavior of the car when the driver behaves in that accelerate brake accelerate brake pattern. Randy Klatt: Exactly right. If you think back to February of 2015, we had a collision on I-95 in the Bangor area in Maine. We ended up with almost 100 cars in that pileup. Peter Koch: I remember that. Randy Klatt: Inconceivable. Not really. There it was. So why did that occur? Well, you read all the reports and take a look at what the state police had to say. And clearly, they would say, all right well, weather was probably a contributing factor. And we know it was because it was poor weather. It was February. It was snowing. But had the people driving through that area been driving for the conditions, the flashing lights on the interstate. We know when those say 45 miles an hour. Now, that's advisory only. Well, had people slowed down some and increased their following distance, we never would have had that occur and we might have had a collision. So whatever caused that in the very beginning or the first vehicle was to lose control, hit somebody else, that might have been it because everyone else behind, had they been driving appropriately for the conditions, they should have been able to avoid that pileup. But then you get two and three and then you get four and you get five. And then before you know it, you're stuck in the middle because you actually driving well, you had plenty of following distance. You could stop, but the driver behind you couldn't. So now you end up in the middle of this, too. So again, we can't influence the driver behind other than increase my following distance in front of me so that if I have to stop, I can do it more gradually. I don't have to jam on my brakes in a panic. Therefore, the driver behind me will have more time to be able to stop. So even if they're tailgating me, I'm hopeful that my actions can help prevent him from hitting me. So, it just fundamental driving safely, driving defensively, especially in winter conditions. Peter Koch: But you might say, Randy. But, Randy, if I increase my following distance, what's going to happen? Someone will pull right in front of me. So, I might just as well keep my speed so that I don't give enough room for someone else to make it more challenging for me. So, what do you say to that? Randy Klatt: Sure. Yeah, I've had people tell me ahhh, if I did that, I'd be driving backwards because everybody would be pulling in front of me. The truth of the matter is that doesn't happen. It does happen that people will pull in front of you and fill that space throughout your driving time. At sometimes they will. So, at sometimes, if you are providing 3 minute, 3 seconds of following distance and someone pulls in front of you, you've lost your three seconds. But I'd be willing to bet that if you're following the speed limits or even less if the conditions are worse, that that space will open right back up in front of you again pretty quickly, because the person that passed you is probably one of those people that's in a hurry. They're going to get by no matter what. They'll pull in front of you. They'll accelerate. And you'll have your three seconds back in a matter of seconds. There are times when it might be two. There might be one. And as long as you're aware, you go Oh my gosh. Okay. I got to slow down a little bit more now. I gotta increase it. OK. Now I've got it back to two. There's two and a, there's three. Now I can continue on my way. It'll be it'll be fine. And I've done this for years and I drive all through the Northeast. So that includes Connecticut and New York and Massachusetts and down to Washington, D.C. and all the traffic areas that you can imagine where everyone is in a hurry. And I've never found it to be a hindrance to me. I've never found that I'm causing any real problems. If I was driving 55 on the interstate when everyone else wants, should be driving 70 or is driving 70 now, I'm a hazard that I would not recommend. But simply maintain speed limit. I'll give you a couple miles over if you really feel important. That's OK. But I'm going to maintain that following distance no matter what. And everybody else will be driving faster anyway. So, my time will get back. Peter Koch: I've had that same experience and having a conversation with you about that a number of years ago. Testing that out actually coming out of Washington, D.C. to go see one of one of my accounts down there. So, coming out of the airport, driving through heavy traffic and staying at the speed limit for the conditions. And it was summertime. So, the road conditions were great. Heavy traffic. And if I stayed at the speed limit and drove defensively, kept that cushion, people would pull in front of me. And within a few seconds, I'd have that cushion back and people would just keep falling and in front of me. And you would essentially catch up with someone later on down the road, because there was going to be a traffic congestion that caused a slowdown. And you could see him up 10, 15, 20, 30 cars up ahead. But they weren't miles and miles and miles and miles ahead of you. Randy Klatt: No, they weren't. And especially in the northeast where, you know, there's tollbooth every couple of miles. So, you know what the heck you know that you're gonna be right behind that person that just passed you in such a hurry and disappears down the hill in a mile, you know, because you're if you're from the area particularly, you think, OK, well, there's a tollbooth in about three miles. I know who's gonna be right in front of me. It just it doesn't make any sense to try to fight it. Another consultant that taught driving overseas, talking about doing that with his students. And, you know, when you drive to work tomorrow and drive the way you always do and write down your time and then the next day, drive following every rule, follow the speed limit, give your distance, blah, blah, blah and then write down the time and then tell me what the difference is.  For him and that experience over the years, it was only a couple of minutes, even by the math the difference between fifty-five miles an hour and seventy-five miles an hour on a ten-mile trip is only four minutes difference. And that assumes constant speed, which you'll never be able to do anyway. So, in the winter, this becomes even more important. We should not have ninety-five or one hundred cars piled up in a collision like that. If people are driving the way, they should be driving. Peter Koch: And a lot of that is preparation. You talk about that the individual who wants to gain a little bit of time is going to get a little bit of a little bit faster. Chances are they made that decision when they left the house that morning. And grant that it might not have been their decision, but they made the decision to try to make up for that time, whether it because they got up late, because they had a problem at home, because there was something else going on, they chose to make up that time in the most dangerous thing that we're gonna do any day, which is getting a car drive. And if we think about all of the decisions that have to keep us on the road. Right. So that the tools that the car gives us are tires and technology, we still have to have a pilot. And that pilot in there is that essential piece that has to make thousands upon thousands of decisions every minute in order to keep that vehicle on the road safely. The more distractions that we have, the more challenges that we have to our ability to pay attention and those decisions that we make will inevitably cause us to have issues.  Cause the tools that we have within the car to exceed their limitations. And then we're gonna have an accident. Randy Klatt: Absolutely right. We would be remiss if we didn't mention distracted driving in any topic around driving.  Certainly, most important, when the weather conditions are poor. Just remember, the human brain can only make so many decisions in so many times, in so much time. And really, we're only doing one thing at a time. So that distraction that takes your eyes or your brain off the roadway, off the conditions, off the traffic simply allows again, Sir Isaac Newton to be in the driver's seat, taking you where he will and not where you necessarily want to go. So, you're just gonna set yourself up for those problems that you find yourself in a position where you can't do anything about it. You can no longer stop in time based on this amount of space that you have. And if road conditions are bad, you're going to need more space. So, the collision is almost inevitable based on where you found yourself. So, let's back that chain of events up, back to where we now have control and we'll leave that extra space in front of us so that we can avoid those situations completely. Peter Koch: Sure. Just consider back to that initial example that you gave, having the experience of missing your exit on the highway. So, I'm distracted to some point and I didn't pay attention to where I was on the road. I see the exit in the corner of my eye as I blow past it. My initial reaction is, oh, no. And I have a choice in that particular moment to take my foot off the accelerator and hit the brake or just keep going to the next exit and maintaining that speed and that driving distance. But that initial reaction is to be able to slow down. And if the weather conditions are challenging, if the road is wet, if it's raining, if it's snowing, if it's that there's ice or even if there's a buildup of winter sand on the side of the road, again, you don't have the traction. Randy Klatt: No, you don't. And keep in mind, the legal tread depth for a tire for almost every state, for most states is two thirty-seconds of an inch. Why the government can't reduce fractions?  I don't, I don't know.  It's a sixteenth of an inch. But, you know, two thirty-seconds of an inch of tread depth is legal. That's for D.O.T. as well. Steering tires four thirty-seconds of an inch. So, if we've got winter tires on our vehicle that are designed for snow that have the snowflake symbol with the Twin Peaks on it tells us that that tires supposed to perform 10 percent better than your other tires. That's a great safety feature.  But if the tread depth is worn down to six thirty-seconds, we have lost a huge percentage of our performance, more than 50 percent of our performance. So, it's a tire that is legal. It's six thirty-seconds tread depth as compared to the legal limit of two. But it's not nearly as well-performing as it was when it was newer. So, I see so many people that they go to their state inspection. The tires are close. Well, OK it passed, but you really should get new ones and they say, OK. And then they say, well, now I've got another year. WooHoo! Well, no, you don't. Those tires are not going to perform nearly as well. And true too of snow tires. So do the rotation like you should put the winter tires on at the time of season when you need them, but take them off when you don't, especially studded tires. Those really aren't doing you much good except on really hard packed snow and ice.  But for a lot of states, well, I think every state there are time limits where you have to have those off your vehicle. So be careful of those times and understand what the wear on those tires really are. And you may have to replace winter tires quicker than you might otherwise. Otherwise, you're losing the performance that you paid for. Peter Koch: Excellent. Randy. Those are that's a really good thought about having the proper really the proper shoes on your vehicle for the season. That's the type of thing you're not going to hike up a mountain someplace in sandals or you're not going to go to the opera in steel-toed boots. So, it's having the right tool for the job, for the right the right conditions. So, let's recap here and just kind of put together sort of those list of tips and things that folks can do to be better or safer drivers in the winter. And I'm going to start with the first one was going to be make sure your vehicle is properly maintained and understand its limitations. We've talked about a bunch of those things. So, understanding what has or how your vehicle will operate in the adverse conditions, what technology is in place for it to alert you to different challenges and how it's limited and make sure it's properly maintained. What else would you suggest for tips for our listeners to keep safe while winter driving? Randy Klatt: Well, again, fall back to the fundamental. If I don't have to go somewhere, I'm not going to go. So, let's wait an hour. Let's wait till later this afternoon, maybe even tomorrow if it's something I'm doing for pleasure or just a grocery store trip that I can I can get by. Let's do that. Let's let the snowplows get out there, do their job, clear the roads is certainly in states that see snow frequently within hours after the snow has stopped falling, you're gonna have pretty clear roads to use. So, let's do that first. Secondly, give yourself a little extra time. Slow down on the roadway. Let everybody else be in a hurry and risk themselves if that's gonna be the case, because you can't control that, but you are in control of your vehicle. Give yourself that extra space in front of you so that you have extra time to react and extra time for that vehicle to stop if that has to occur.  And overall, always understand your vehicle, the technology, what's going to help you, what's not. Make sure those tires are in good condition as they are the only thing that touches the road. Know how to use all the whiz bang features that you might have and understand ultimately that you are responsible. It's so easy to say the weather caused it. When I did crash investigation in the Navy for aircraft crashes, we could not use weather as a causal factor. It was prohibited by this, by the rules. Imagine that.  Pilot flies into a thunderstorm and a thunderstorm brings him down. Certainly, that's the weather's probably fault. And no, the answer is it was the pilot's fault for flying into it. So, use that overall guiding philosophy. You're in charge of that vehicle. You're responsible for your life. Anyone in your vehicle and all those people around you. Drive to save lives, time and money, despite the conditions around you and the actions of others.  Peter Koch: I think that's fantastic. Randy, those are all excellent points and I think our listeners will be able to take that with them as we come into this winter season.  So that about wraps up this week safety podcast. I appreciate everything that you've provided for us today, Randy, and all of our listeners out there who have followed us through this podcast. So today we've been speaking with Randy Klatt, director of Region II Loss Control with MEMIC about winter driving safety. And if you have any questions for our guest or like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast. Email us at podcast@MEMIC.com Resources/Articles/People Mentioned in Podcast MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/ Peter Koch - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch Randy Klatt - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/randy-klatt Sir Isaac Newton - https://www.biography.com/scientist/isaac-newton Hierarchy of Safety Controls - https://www.creativesafetysupply.com/glossary/hierarchy-of-controls/ ABS Systems - https://auto.howstuffworks.com/auto-parts/brakes/brake-types/anti-lock-brake1.htm National Safety Council - https://www.nsc.org/ Mythbusters - https://go.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) - https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/default.aspx 2015 Bangor, ME: I-95 Pile-Up - https://bangordailynews.com/2015/03/11/news/bangor/police-i-95-pileup-involved-more-than-100-vehicles-no-charges-expected/ Department of Transportation (DOT) - https://www.transportation.gov/

On this week's episode, I ramble more than usual. After that, we'll talk about some twitter news. Then I'm excited to tell you more about my next podcast production as I was able to secure an interview with someone crucial to the incredible story of "Crazy Eddie"

Every holiday season, EMS teams respond to hundreds of house fires, electrical burns, falls from height, and decorating or party related problems. Holiday decoration and Christmas tree fires are more damaging than other fires, resulting in twice the injuries and five times the fatalities per fire as the average winter holiday home fire. Follow MEMIC Safety Management Consultant Hartley Webb’s advice on the proper use of electrical cords and appliances so you aren’t putting your friends and family in danger. Plus, listen to the end of the episode for gift ideas to keep your loved ones safe. Peter Koch: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the Safety Experts podcast. So, let's set the stage. It's winter. The air is well below freezing and there's a bunch of youth standing out around the flagpole in the schoolyard. One of them says to the other. Are you kidding? Stick my tongue on that stupid pole. That's dumb. The response from his friend. I triple dog dare you. So, you may recall those immortal words from a Christmas story when Flik is about to stick his tongue on a metal flagpole in the schoolyard on the dare of his friend. Well peer pressure is a real thing. Even beyond the schoolyard, every Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons or no matter what holiday it is. E.M.S. teams respond to hundreds of house fires. Electrical burns, fall from a height, and decorating or party related problems that arise from people trying to perpetuate holiday cheer. And many of these problems arise from the improper use of electrical cords or appliances. We're going to talk about some of that today. I'm your host, Peter Koch and for the past 17 years, I've been working for MEMIC as a safety expert within the hospitality and construction industries. What I realize is that safety impacts every part of each position or tasks that you do even during the holidays. For today's episode, Holiday Safety Fails and Fixes. I'm speaking with Hartley Webb safety management consultant with MEMIC to better understand what safety challenges the holidays bring and what we can do to address them. Hartley has been a safety management consultant with MEMIC for 27 years, almost since its inception and working with a variety of businesses. He's a frequent speaker for the main in New Hampshire Safety Councils and is the chairperson for the Board of Occupational Safety and Health in Maine. Hartley achieved his CSP in 2005 is an and is a captain in his local fire department in his hometown in northern Maine. Hartley. Welcome to the podcast today. Hartley Webb: Thank you. It's a pleasure being here. Peter Koch: Excellent. I really appreciate it. So, let's jump right into this thing. We're going to talk about safety for the holidays, but we've. Before we see the solutions of how we can be safe. Let's talk about some of the results about how people try to persevere, and holiday cheer and they aren't always successful. So, do you have any examples that you've come across in your time? Hartley Webb: For electrical safety, doing the holidays? A lot of that stems from people being in a hurry, not having the right material, equipment maybe growing, you know, starting out small and then getting larger each year, but not taking into account of what they're doing or even understanding how to do it correctly. Peter Koch: Sure. Maybe start with just a few Christmas lights here and then your neighbor puts up more Christmas lights and you put it more Christmas lights and all of a sudden, you're like you half the use of CMP for the month that that time, right? Hartley Webb: Correct. And there's still tapping off the same outlet they did when they started. Peter Koch: Yeah, sure. So, when someone does that, like, what's the what's the possible result of that happening? Hartley Webb: Again, some of that understanding is just having a basic understanding of how much can a single outlet handle for for wattage and amperage. And, you know, and not overdoing it and creating an issue at the home that could be hazardous to themselves or to the to, you know, children, family. Peter Koch: Sure. Sure. And if I overload that outlet too much, what are the consequences? Hartley Webb: Well, this is basically going to be the damage to equipment or damage to the structure, which worst-case would-be fire potential. Peter Koch: Sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, you see it in the paper often where someone's plugged in too many things or it could be a Christmas tree or something else and the heat catches something on fire or there's a spark. It catches on fire. And all of a sudden, it's a total loss for the house. So, it makes a sad and tragic outcome sometimes. Hartley Webb: Yeah. You see a lot of it, especially in the residential, a lot of the fires, even commercial. A lot of that. When you hear them. They usually just use the term it was electrical in nature. But a lot of that is misuse of of extension cords or overloading of circuits. And people just not understanding what those risk factors are, how they even come to the point where they've created a hazard. Peter Koch: Sure. Sure. So, let's think about some of those risk factors. Let's start with the house first and not what you plug into it, but like when you are looking at your facility, whether it's a commercial facility or it's going to be your home, what are some of the things that you're looking at from hardwiring in your house that would cause you to make some changes, possibly in how you decorate your home? Hartley Webb: Well, you I mean, it's it's understanding what you're plugging into it. So, you take a typical you take a typical circuit house that's gonna be there, a 15- or 20-amp circuit. And without getting too technical, if you looked at that's 120 volts, that's basically that circuit has the capability of supplying about 1,800 watts. So, if you start if you look at your typical light bulb, you say you've got a lot of 60 watt bulbs, you start adding how many bulbs are in that display. Once you get to eighteen hundred, you have you know in total wattage. You've actually maxed out that circuit. You shouldn't even be running at that potential you should be running less so. It doesn't take long. But who sits there and adds that up? Usually, they'll, they'll, you know, configure their decorations to the point where the circuit breaker now trips. Well, why did that happen? Well, you just keep resetting that circuit that can lead to problems down the road. Stuff is obviously running hot cause heat is what causes that to occur. Peter Koch: Sure. So, when you're looking to plug something in, there's usually some other thing is tied into that circuit already. And like you have a refrigerator or the other lights or other appliances. And when you tie in Christmas lights or other decorations, things to shine on your house, lights to make the outside lit. Other things like that, you're adding to the load that that circuit is being demanded of. Hartley Webb: Right. And you’re typically a typical residential circuit will have usually five to six receptacles on a circuit. So, you know, unless you really, truly understand the houses electrical system. You've got to figure out, OK, what what outlets go back to that one circuit and then start tracing. Everything that’s plugged into that circuit. So, you just tap into a garage outlet. What else is in that garage that's running and and hopefully they didn't, but they probably fed in another adjacent room, maybe onto that circuit. So, you could start chasing a lot to see what it is that's drawing power off of that that single circuit. Peter Koch: Sure. So just because I have multiple outlets within one room or on one side of my house doesn't mean that they're all tied to separate circuit breakers. They could all be on the same circuit breaker. Hartley Webb: Correct. They shouldn't have more than six outlets on a given circuit. But again, who's who's added on put additions on tapped in? That can change over time. Peter Koch: Sure. And it might not have been a certified or qualified electrician doing the work either. Hartley Webb: Correct. Peter Koch: Especially on residential. On the residential side commercial side, it should be much different. But the residential side, which is where a lot of the issues are going to happen, you're going to find homeowners doing a lot of their own work. Hartley Webb: Yes, you're correct. Peter Koch: Yes. Excellent. Hartley Webb: Or getting a friend. Peter Koch: Or getting a friend to do it. Right. I can do that. Absolutely. Are there any other safety factors when you think about setting up temporary lighting or temporary decorations? Hartley Webb: Well, the biggest one from a from the hardwire, rather, it's being hardwire, but the supply system should be, you know, don't set up a display without including a ground-fault circuit interrupter is probably the most important thing you can do, especially if that's an outdoor system. So, if you're running anything outdoors, we're exposed to the elements, exposed to moisture, having a ground fault circuit outlet. And that could be either. That could be well, it could be an outlet itself’ s typical to what you'd find in your bathroom. Got your set reset button on it could be a circuit. Most homeowners aren't typically going to have a circuit breaker unless it goes to the garage or out to a pool where a circuit breaker itself has the ground-fault built into it, but it could start at the circuit breaker panel. It probably is at the outlet. If it's feeding outdoors somewhere or if you don't know, then put one in-line as a pigtail or part of an extension cord. And then that will protect that will protect the human. The everything else is protecting the property. But if you actually want to keep the person from having a shock potential, then the only thing that's going to do that is going to be a ground-fault circuit interrupter. Peter Koch: So, let's let's just touch briefly on that. What's the difference between the circuit breaker in your in your circuit panel down in your basement or in your closet versus that GFCI outlet or the GFCI pigtail that you might use to plug your stuff into? Hartley Webb: That's a great question. Is a lot of people think that they may get a false sense of security, thinking that the breaker that's in the circuit panel is going to protect them when again, that's a 15, the smallest is going to be a 15-amp breaker. So, if you start talking milliamps, which is one thousandths of a single amp, 20 milliamps, so twenty one thousandths of an amp is going to be dangerous to the human. You know, if they're coming in contact with that kind of amperage yet it'll take basically 15000 milliamps worth of worth of its heat that'll trip that circuit breaker. So, the circuit breaker is really there for property protection. The ground-fault circuit interrupters are designed to trip out at 5 milliamps when they're new. And again, it's mechanical. So but it when they're new, they should be tripping out at 5 milliamps, which will only give the slightest of even a a tingle to the human body and it will trip that circuit out in one fortieth of a second and preventing the human being from from suffering a shock. So only that will protect the human. The others, the circuit breakers only for property protection only. Peter Koch: So, the circuit breaker detects the overload. I'm overloading to a particular point, but I mean you could be you know, you could plug into that 15 amp circuit breaker that has been in the house for 30 years and it might not function the way it's supposed to either. Hartley Webb: Correct. Or you're human. He doesn't draw the full amperage. Peter Koch: True. Hartley Webb: Now, you could be passing, you know, 10 amps through the human body and that circuit breaker will not stop providing power. So and that's where you'll see the people when they get a human gets a hold of a circuit where they, you know, they can't let go because it's taken over the muscles in the body and they end up being part of that circuit until somebody kills the electricity. They're not drawing the full 15 amps, or the breaker never trips. But yet the body suffered severe burns as a result of the shock that they've encountered. Peter Koch: Sure. So therefore, that GFCI that the ground-fault circuit interrupter is going to be a is the only tool that you can use for personal protection. Hartley Webb: Correct. And it should be a must anytime anybody sets up any type of holidays display. Peter Koch: Yeah. So that's a great idea. If you don't have one in your circuit panel and you're not plugging in to a circuit that's or outlet that's already GFCI, then purchase something that you can plug your your holiday decorations into then. Hartley Webb: Correct. Yes. Peter Koch: Now with those if you're going to use one of those, anything that you need to take into consideration? Hartley Webb: Again, ground-fault is going to sense any loss of amperage. So, you're going to make sure now that every all of your connections and everything are all gonna be dry. You're not going to have any faulty wiring. I mean, it's going to tell you what kind of quality of a of a circuit you've put in place, because if it if that circuit has the ability to have any faults in it, the ground-fault is gonna do its job, which may become frustrating. But you don't want to be bypassing it because you're putting people at risk that are downstream from that electrical current. Peter Koch: Sure. I that's interesting. You bring that up. I had a friend once who was installing Christmas lights and on recommendation, he installed the GFCI pigtail in there and it kept popping. The pigtail kept popping pop and every time. So, what did he do? He pulled the pigtail out and just plugged that right directly into the wall. And of course, he didn't have any problems anymore. So, the issue in his mind was the pigtail is faulty. But what you found later on was there was some damage actually in the cordage that he was using, which was causing the leakage, which kept tripping everything. Now, no one got hurt in that particular case. But still, like you said, it's a great indication if the GFCI trips, you want to make sure you're looking downstream for the problem and not just assume that it's a bad GFCI. Hartley Webb: Correct. Yeah. And then you want to also make sure that everything on the other side of that GFCI, because now we're dealing with flexible temporary cords and everything from that point on should be of the quality. That's required as listed and labeled for how you're actually using it. And that's a that's a whole different area, but probably one of the bigger exposure areas that I see at businesses, at homes. And when they start setting up these holiday decorations, they're just not using the electrical cords that they should be and in the manner that they should be. And if you typically had a GFCI in the circuit, you're probably going to be tripping that out. But if you want to, we can go through what I see commonly as some of those temporary electrical or your extension cord issues. Peter Koch: Yeah. Let's talk about some of those. I think those are be great examples for you to bring out. I guarantee you that someone listening to this is going, oh, that's in my house or I saw that in my place of business. Hartley Webb: The first one to look at is the type if you're going to use extension cords is the type of cord indoor use. They're gonna be listed in label for indoor use. Those are typically your two wire two prong extension cords. Once you get to a three prong three wire that has the ground pin on the plug end, those are listed as outdoor cords and they should be if you ever looked at the cord closely without getting into a lot of technical detail. It should have a listing embossed or stamped or written on to the to the core casing. And you want to be looking for the letters either S, W, J, and O, which will all kind of come in there together. But that's telling you it's a flexible cord, S would. If you see the letter W on it, that's got to be a cord rated for outdoor wet conditions. So those will typically be three wire cords and you're looking for the J. That's your that's that's a good quality hard service, junior hard service type, you know, extension cord. So that's gonna be like a 12, it can be 12 to 16 gauge. But again, those are some of the things that you should also be looking at is how long you're running cords shouldn't be hooking them together in a series really exceeding 100 feet would be maximum on like a on your 12 gauge. So again, is a little weird, but just the higher the lower the number, the bigger the cord. So. Peter Koch: Sure. Hartley Webb: You know typically your smallest cord you should you should ever use on a holiday display would be a 16. Peter Koch: And is that going to show right on the jacket of the cord? Hartley Webb: Should be on the jacket of the cord. So, if you have a 16 that's about as small as you should go. They do sell 18, some of them called ribbon cord. They've also got a nickname, zip cord and a fire service, which is a sound they make when they get overheated, because that's the last sound you hear before that cord literally turns into looking like a toaster element because typically those are 13 amp rating cords being provided by a 15 amp outlet, which means that the cord will turn in to basically looking like two toaster elements in. But the breaker panel will still provide you power because it needs 15 amps to overheat while the cord can only tolerate 13. So, you'll actually disintegrate the cord while the breaker still provides power so. Peter Koch:  It just keeps feeding it. Hartley Webb: That is a common in that zip cord in the fire service is probably one of the leading causes of house fires because people try to run their stereo systems off it with big amps. Still try to run a, you know, for holiday decorations it would be those are your typical brown and white really thin. They get a little three-way box on the end of it. So, you use them as extension cords. They're designed for lamps. They're illegal for commercial use, which should tell you that they probably shouldn't be in the residential, but they sell them in every store. They're inexpensive. They're not supposed to be hooked together in a series because it'll cause significant heat again from overloading and loss. You know, Ohm's Law will kick in as more of those you start plugging together. Peter Koch: So, you should never use the zip cord. You always want to use something that's 16 gauge or greater. Hartley Webb: Correct. Peter Koch: And really, that's designed or not so much designed, but the cord you purchase should be based on the location, the but the length of run that you're going to have and what you're going to plug into it. Hartley Webb: Correct. You know, rule of thumb, if you if you read into a lot of the literature on it, if you own 16-gauge extension cords, they should not be run out to length greater than 50 feet. And at 50 feet, a 16-gauge core can only tolerate 13 amps. So, it can't really even tolerate what the circuits providing. So even use in 16-gauge cords, I mean around my home ribbon cords definitely are not allowed in in my home or any of my family's homes. If I find them, I usually remove them because I know they're the leading cause. House fires. 16-gauge extension cords really should spend the money and and get a 14 or a 12. And those should be the extension cord you see outdoors, you know, in the in the in the environments for these for these, you know, decorative displays just so they can handle the load safely. And they shouldn't still go over 100 hundred feet even for a 12-gauge. They say you should not have more than one hundred feet in total length and still be able to provide that circuit load of protection. And again, if you go longer lengths, circuit is still going to provide it. But now you're going to be creating heat, which was going to be causing an issue down line either with with the cords or with the decorative displays. And something is going to be running hot in that circuit, so. Peter Koch: Sure. So, then the more heat, the more possibility there is for for a fault, some place to melt the cord, damage the appliance or to cause a fire. Because many times you're running those cords around the baseboard or back behind a display somewhere around a bookshelf someplace or especially around the holidays, you're always moving things around. And there's there's combustible material that you're running those things around and through. Hartley Webb: Correct. And if it is so for overall, if I get asked to come in and look at a decorative display from a safety perspective, again, I'm usually standing at the outlet receptacle, making sure it's in good condition, free from damage. Has a cover plate on it. There's no exposures and the receptacle itself is not broken. Then I take a look at the extension cords that make you see that there's a ground-fault in the system. So, it's either in the outlet or it's it's in the circuit, somewhere in the cord or or at the breaker. Then I'm inspecting the cords. How many how much are they using? What's the length? Is it a good listed and labeled cord? So, it's either listed either has UL, underwriting laboratories, which is what we would use here in America, or there's a Canadian listing and labeling also that's equivalent to. But it's just it's a listed and labeled cord is not something has been picked up. So, and that it goes for the holiday decorations too, that they're all have that same UL listing somewhere on that decorative display. And and then the extension cords that are running them, free from damage, free from nicks, any of the junctions where you would plug two together being kept dry out of the moisture. So, they're not sitting in a puddle frozen in the snow. Peter Koch: So, let me let me roll you back just a moment and let's talk a little bit about that UL listing or the Canadian certification. So why is that important for the purchaser to to assure that that appliance or that cord has that listing? Hartley Webb: If it if it's listed as if you're looking for something this labeled as the outdoor use like I talked about, so you're looking for that. They're the ones that have proved that listing. So those letters we talked about looking for that J is a junior hard that's going to have a good outer cording. Typically, if you see a J on your chord, it's going to tolerate the freezing temperatures that we'll experience here in the northeast. So, it's going to be able to handle that without damage breaking of the chords. So underwriting laboratories is the one that's done that testing behind the scene and has approved that cord under all of these conditions. So, you know, it's gonna have the W for the wet. It's gonna it's gonna have the if it has an O on it that means it's tolerable to, you know, an oil type environment. J gonna be your junior usage. So, you really look for that, J in the O for outdoor display type. Peter Koch: Sure. Hartley Webb: And so, you're relying on that agency to to make sure that it passed those tests before it could be sold. Peter Koch: So, they've done the testing to assure that it meets at least a minimum standard. So you know that if you're going to purchase something with that listing and it's going to have the qualifications for location and type of use and amperage that you can then use that as the minimum correct in order to figure out how this could be used or even if it should be used in your display planning. Hartley Webb: Right. They're just telling you it's approved for how you want to use it. Now, you have to have some basic knowledge of say, okay, how am I using this? And I don't overuse it. Peter Koch: Sure. Hartley Webb: Like connecting too many together. Another common exposure. I see a lot in the in both residential and commercial. Is the use of the computer power strip. I mean, if you read that, it's not an extension cord. I can't remember actually how it's listed and labeled, but is a term that it, but you can't plug an extension cord into a power strip. You also can't plug a power strip into an extension cord based on the listing and labelling is just not allowed because of the potential overloading of that circuit. So, you can't plug two together. She can't start stringing these power cords along these computer strips to try to give yourself more outlets because again, there's more potential now. So, the manufacturers are like, no, you know, I'm going to give you six additional outlets. You're already plugging those into a six-receptacle circuit. You're looking at 12 potential, you know, places to plug stuff in now, and they, and they just don't want to continue that. So, again, you can't pigtail those together again, you can't run them off extension cords and you can't run extension cords off of the computer strips. So that's commonly we'll see those on the displays because, you know, you have 50 displays on your front lawn, where are you plug in these all in? Peter Koch: Yeah. And you see it, too, like you're going to run a 50-foot extension cord or 100 foot extension cord out from the garage to your front yard and you're gonna have a power strip that connects your lights to it. You're blow up snowman, your video display or whatever you're going to have out in your front yard. That's all plugged into that power strip. And you have no idea how much that's drawing. But we've seen it, especially here in the wintertime where you after its snowed. And if it snows early, people put their displays out after it snows, and they start running those displays. You'll see the cord melt down through the snow because it's generating enough heat to be able to do that. Interesting. Yeah. So, we talked about cords. We talked about some about cords. What are other what other mistakes? Do people make that you see using extension cords or power strips in the home? Hartley Webb: One of them is causing them to be damaged based on how they're being used. So, you know, you're really not supposed to run them out windows where your windows are being closed on them and causing impact, don't put them under carpets or that type of stuff or areas where weight could be distributed onto them because it has ability, again, at those points to be creating heat and causing a little additional resistance. The garage doors and then allowing the garage door to continually to close on it or worst case is to put it on a hinge door or throughway hinge door where every time that door opens and closes, it has the potential to continually damage and pinch that cord, let alone I've seen them run across driveways, walking surfaces being hung by staples and other conductive material that have not only the potential to damage the external casing of the cord, but may inadvertently, you know, penetrate the cord. Now, now there's the potential to again create a shock hazard by somebody coming in contact and in bringing that electricity outside of the enclosure that it should be inside the cord. Peter Koch: Sure, sure. Yeah. So not not hanging. So how would you hang an extension cord if you needed to get it up off the ground and you had the potential to do that. How could you hang a cord? Hartley Webb: Yeah, they actually if if for Christmas type displays or holiday displays. If you have a roof type thing, they actually have clips that will go on not only metal rules, but will also go on shingled roofs that are nonconductive. They actually caused no roof penetration. So, saves you actually putting penetrations and holes in your house. If you do have to hang them. Recommend not stapling them, it would be better to staple like a zip tie to the building and then attach the cord with the zip ties. So, you've got something nonconductive that's literally you know that the cord is hung by. Anytime you have a drop from overhead, where there would there be a lot of weight resistance or stress placed that should be taken up by some type of, you know, don't cause that type of stress. Don't hang a lot of stuff where you're causing a lot of weight and pull onto the cords. They're just not designed for that. And they'll have the potential to be damaged, especially if exposed to, you know, the environmental cold conditions. And for long periods of time, wind, that's the type of stuff that may cause movement. But again, using using the zip ties, using they make, not conductive clips. If you're going to use staples, they have insulated staples. So again, you don't have the potential to damage and then penetrate the protective casing of the cord. Peter Koch: Right. So that sounds great. So, don't damage the outside. Don't hang out with something conductive. Make sure that you're not hanging. The weight of the appliance or whatever you are tying into from the cord itself have something else to take up the strain, right? Hartley Webb: Yeah. And if you gotta run them across a walking working on surfaces, try to run over doors and stuff but if you've got to run them across, bridge them, protect them somehow so that traffic, people shoveling aren't going to come in contact with them. Vehicles are driving over them, that kind of stuff. Where you've got a high potential for damage. Peter Koch: Catch them in the snow blower. Hartley Webb: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Get them off the ground. In this climate, because when you put him down, everything's usually exposed. But within three or four weeks, next thing you know, you're you can't find it when the season's done. So, you're either leaving it till spring or you're pulling it up and it's frozen into the ground. Peter Koch: And no doubt. No doubt. Okay. Excellent. So, cords let's see the we talked about the length of course we've talked about the UL listing of the cords. We've talked about making sure that we're not going to overload the circuit by plugging too many cords and the use of of those of the power strips and trying not to use or not using those power strips as an extension of the extension cord. But, you know, using that to plug directly into the into the outlet. Peter Koch: So, if you had to figure out how much you could plug in to an extension cord, how would what would you do? How would you do it? Hartley Webb: Well, like I mentioned, your typical circuit. It's 120-volt circuit. So, in a 15 amp, 120 volt circuit can handle 1800 watts. So, one way of doing that is figuring out all your wattage. So, every one of your displays, your LCD displays, or your incandescent bulbs will have a wattage. So, if you buy a string of lights, it's going to tell you on that box what wattage that light string takes. So how many light strings can you plug together in a series? If you read most of manufacturers of the incandescent lights, the ones that have the filament, the old style, not the new L.E.Ds, but the incandescent ones, they all, most manufacturers won't allow you to put more than three of those strings together in a series. They've got a plug on each end. So ideally, I get, you know, some people tend to just go to infinity until they run out of money of buying lights. But again, the manufacturer doesn't want more than three of those because, again, what's the wattage of that individual string? And so, you would be adding that up to try to say, OK, I can't go to 1800 and 1800 is the maximum that should be placed on a circuit. So, you should be a little shy of that. And then also be aware if you're running that on an extension cord, that may not you know, again, if you're buying the 16 gauge cords, you're going to make sure you've got some really short lengths like 25, anything over 25 feet doesn't necessarily have the potential to supply that fully eighteen hundred. So again, you would want a good quality extension cord. But as far as determining that that would be one way of doing that would be to just figure out what you have for load. And you mentioned it earlier, but you've also got to look at what else is plugged onto that series before it gets to the outlet you're using, because if you're running refrigerators and anything else, freezers that may be in the garage, before you tap into that garage outlet for your outside Christmas display you want, or you've get hot tubs and other things that maybe things that are tapped into that circuit. You want to be including those. Peter Koch: Sure. Because you could have the holiday party happening. You could have people coming over and you. Plug in your display. It might work great until the refrigerator kicks on and then your whole house goes dead and you start putting the hot appliance, anything that has heaters involved with it out in the garage where you might have a, you know, a table set up and you've got the crockpot going and anything that's got a heating element is drawing a lot of wattage. Peter Koch: Let's take a quick break and we'll be back in just a moment for more discussion with Hartley and the holiday safety fails and fixes. Peter Koch: Ever cringe when watching someone, you know, take on a task or wonder how they survived the last project they started? Or maybe you've thought the next time I do this; I really need one of those. Well, just in time for the holiday gift buying season. The team here, MEMIC, has put together a gift giving guide for the safety minded and some ideas for gifts for those friends and family that you want to keep around after the holidays. Check out the list and a surprise gift giveaway at the end of this episode of the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. Peter Koch: Welcome back to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Hartley Webb, safety management consultant at MEMIC. So, let's jump right in with some more electrical safety questions regarding the holidays. Before we broke, we were talking about electrical cord safety and had looked into different components of what might make a system fail. Well, what are some of the separate fixes that you might have for it? Overall, if we're looking at setting up a display for the holidays, whether it's going to be Thanksgiving, Christmas or a winter holiday or really any holiday, what are some of the good operational safety practices that you can follow for electrical purposes? Hartley Webb: First thing I would do is when you when you bring your electrical appliances out, whether be decorations, hot pots, the computer power strips, the whatever it is you're going to set up for your electrical supply and for the equipment you're using inspect it. I mean, look at the plug ends. Make sure they're in good condition, free from damage if it is an appliance or a cord that does have. It's a three-wire outdoor listed cord. It should have three prongs. Make sure the ground pin, pin exists, cause that ground is there for your protection. So if there is a fault in any of the appliances or devices, it has a path for that current to flow back out of the piece of equipment or the other or the appliance or whatever it is that you're using and put it back safely to ground. Peter Koch: So, let me hold you there for just one second. If I have a three-pin cord coming from my appliance. Hypothetically, let's just say that I'm trying to plug it into a two-space receptacle, whether that be an outlet on the wall or even an extension cord. I shouldn't break the ground pin off to make it fit? Hartley Webb: You shouldn't. And don't use one of the adapters that converts your three prong into a two prong. Better known as a suicide adapter, because that's just about what you're attempting to do. You're getting rid of that. That's there for your safety and that needs to function. So, you don't want to be putting that into the outlet. If you do use one of those, it can legally be used on an outlet to convert. But you have to verify because now you still need ground. So those little adapter plugs have the ability to use the center screw on your receptacle plate as a ground, but you have to verify that that center screw is grounded. So, if it's not grounded, it serves no purpose. So just don't use it, and that and that brings back the whole ground-fault circuit interrupter again. Again, because if your cord has a ground fault in it, because if you're still looking at a two wired outlet receptacle in the wall, I can pretty much guarantee you it doesn't have a ground fault on the breaker. So, if you got if you got old wiring in the house, forget the ground-fault. You're going to have to add that in a cord, a GFCI will function on a two-wire circuit. So that doesn't give you permission or you should, still shouldn't use a three-wire extension cord missing a ground pin. If you're missing that ground pin, either have somebody properly fix the cord or replace the cord. But you really want to use, because again, you're you want to have a ground pin on your extension cords. I really wouldn't bother buying in an indoor rated two wire cord. Peter Koch: Extension cords can get pretty pricey. And while many homeowners or business owners will be looking to save a little money here and there so they go and purchase those small two wire extension cords in the long run, you really want to have the tool that's going to protect your investment in the property and decorations, but also the people that are going to be using it or sharing in the holiday cheer that you're going to be presenting, is that correct? Hartley Webb: Correct. Correct. And then again, to get back to the original question there, I would inspect it. So, make sure it's got the ground pin on it. Look at the entire length of the cord. Make sure there's no damage cuts or anything in the protective casing of that of those cords, whether they be on the appliance or an extension cord. If there is damage, don't tape it. Don't try to make any, if you've got really good shrink tubing, but then you've got to take the ends off to fix it. Just don't try and makeshift because wrapping tape around it doesn't really do much but, it allows moisture to get in, allows moisture to be trapped. Doesn't really give you the protection you really want, if you've got a lot of damage to the cord you want to be replacing the cords. It's really the only safe way to go home. And it is your friends and family that we're looking at. So. Peter Koch: So inspect all the appliances that you're going to be plugging in, inspect the outlets that you're going to be plugging the appliance into, and then inspect the cords that you're going to be using to get some distance away from those wall outlets as well. Hartley Webb: Yep. Correct. Peter Koch: Great. So, replace anything that has obvious damage to it or doesn't look functional. So, let's talk a little bit about how you can go about protecting yourself and your property from damage or from harm. Hartley Webb: Figure out, make sure or try not to overload. And to give a good example, if we just wanted to look at holiday lighting, one of the biggest. You see a lot of people converting from incandescent to the L.E.D. and a good example of that would be if you had your typical 15-amp circuit. Although we have said that that 15-amp circuit can handle the the 1800 watts. Ideally, they don't want more than 1400 watts on that 15 amp. So, if we looked at 1440 is what they want. So, 1440 watts. What does that mean? Well a string of L.E.D lights. You literally could plug in 105 strings of lights. Of L.E.D lights because your typical L.E.D. string only has 12 watts. So that's that's 105 strings of lights on one circuit. If you're using L.E.D, on the other hand, if you bought the old incandescent bulbs, the holiday display bulbs that are incandescent, those are typically 60-watt strings. The ones that I looked up; you could only have 24 strings to max out that same circuit. So, 24 strings of incandescent compared to a hundred and five strings of L.E.D. So if you're looking at these monster displays, then you know where you want to have a lot of lights, it is going to behoove you to go to the L.E.D or you're going to have to use a lot of circuits within your house in order to supply it. You're not going to be able to try to draw off that one outlet on the side of the garage because it's just not going to tolerate it. And again, remembering what else is plugged into that circuit. Peter Koch: Because in order to safely plug in the one 105 L.E.D strings or 60 incandescent strings, you've got to know what else is tapping into that circuit. Correct. They may have to be a dedicated circuit if the holiday decorations will draw more than what the circuit can handle. Hartley Webb: And the manufacturers of those incandescent are telling you, don't put more than three in a series because that's a thin 18-gauge wire that only has 7 amps of capability. So, they don't want more than 3 of their own plugged in because that has the potential now to begin heating itself. Peter Koch: So, the farther away you get from the source, the more that you draw, the more heat you're going to have and the less voltage is available at the end of the line. Hartley Webb: Right. And you're going to have a lot of voltage drop across that fine wire. So, it's creating heat in itself. So that's why they don't want more than 3 any 3 strings hooked together. So, you know, it would take you a lot of strings to have 24 strings at 3 strings to an extension cord. Peter Koch: And am I correct that the solution is not to go and get a bigger breaker? Hartley Webb: Yep. Peter Koch: So, my business code or building code would drive that, but it could also be affected by who did the installation and what they had on hand to do it. Hartley Webb: Correct. Peter Koch: So really, again, knowledge about your system and its limitations is important for both property and personal protection, but really talking about personal protection. Another way to ensure functional personal protection is having that ground-fault circuit interrupter. You can find them integrated into a circuit breaker or receptacle or a power strip or pigtail. So, if I'm buying a pigtail and I want to put it in my circuit, where do I put it in relationship to the tool? And why? Hartley Webb: You want to get it as close to the supply as possible. So, you should if you're going to buy a one that plugs in, it needs to be rated the receptacle. So, if you happen to buy one, that is a 3 way pigtail type so you can put 3 appliances on the end of it or three additional cords on the end of it. You want that on the wall end you don't want to go out with an extension cord and put it out on the far end and then start plugging stuff in. So, you want it as close. You want to protect as much of the temporary wiring circuit that you've created as possible. So, your GFCI should be right at the receptacle. Peter Koch: So let's talk a little bit about the benefits of moving from incandescent to L.E.D., it seems to be a good solution, especially with larger displays or a more fragile system, because it seems to lower the load on the system and the potential for additional heat and therefore failure someplace else within the circuit. Hartley Webb: Right. And with that being said, don't get a false sense security, which a lot do. Cause they'll start wrapping the L.E.D. around the live displays of your bows and your wreaths, your trees or whatever you may have. L.E.D. still produce heat. So again, keeping stuff watered, keeping stuff moist. You know, you still have to be concerned that, it is not going to create anywhere near as much heat. But they still can run warm. They still can create heat. And probably the biggest thing from a fire, I see with heat is gonna be your spotlight. So, any type of a spotlight display, because, again, those are going to be your 250, 500, 1000 watt lights. They're going to create a tremendous amount of heat. So, again, keeping stuff away from them, that's combustible for whatever you have for displays at your home at that time. You're using the spotlights. Peter Koch: Sure. And and in the winter season, even in areas that don't have snow, people have displays around the holidays and those spotlights are becoming more popular. And the grass at that time of year can be dry and brittle. They could be buried in a shrub or someplace to keep it hidden from people to see. And that typical incandescent or halogen light may generate enough heat to create a fire hazard. Hartley Webb: Correct. And the biggest things that a lot of things that tell homeowners from, from the fire perspective or my fire department background is invest in the timers. Number one, you don't want any of these displays or any of these items that you've plugged in for for a dinner holiday party or even if every nightly display, you do not want that stuff running after you've gone to bed. So, you want to make sure that stuff is on timers. You never want any type of display to be operating any of this temporary electrical stuff has been set up once you've gone to bed. I mean, it's just it's creating too much exposure to to be asleep in the house with this stuff all creating heat, all creating load and you just don't want it. So a lot of times I'll ask them to have timer's if you want, if you're willing to have the money, you can invest in a timer that will cycle off for 30 minutes and then stay on for a set period of time. So you can actually allow like if you get a lot of incandescent displays, you can actually set those newer timers for the for the holiday festivities to actually have that stuff go out for like a 30 minute time or go out for 5 minutes every 30 minutes to allow that stuff to cool back off and then heat back up again. So, anything that may have contact with combustible material gives it a chance to cool. And so, they do sell those now and again. It's just having the people that recognize it. Or, you know, or be willing to purchase and set those up. Peter Koch: Well, that's a great suggestion. Timers can help us shut the lights off automatically. But I'm assuming that the timers will have the same limitations that the cords and everything else does. They only seem to be designed as for a certain amount of amperage or voltage. Correct? Hartley Webb: Yep. And you want to make sure there's a lot of the timers. Again, indoor rated, so they're only gonna be a two-wire capability. So, don't be bypassing you need to buy timers that are designed for outdoor use. And again, you can set those for as often as you want them to go on and off. The general rule of thumb that the underwriting laboratories and stuff from what I've referenced for the electrical standards is saying 3 hours on, 30 minutes off. That's their cycle time they want for incandescent lighting displays. Peter Koch: That's a great rule of thumb. So, using a timer and setting it so your display will be on for 3 hours and then off for 30 minutes will allow the fixture and power supplies to cool off and reducing that potential for overheating and a possible fire. Hartley Webb: And again, if it's if it's a display while you're in your home, you do not want that lit up while you're in bed, while you're asleep. So, it needs to go out during the hours in which you're which you're sleeping because that's not when you want something to go wrong in the house. Peter Koch: So, let's just talk about that a little bit. It's not exactly about electrical safety. But tell me about the things that you should have in your house or place of business in the event that something does go wrong and catches on fire. You've done your inspection. You've got your L.E.D. lights. You've got the proper wiring. But there's a fault somewhere or something happens and then there's a fire. So, what should you have in place to help protect lives and property? Hartley Webb: Well, to top of that list is going to be a smoke detector. I mean, and not just having one, but where are they located, and can they be heard from the bedroom? And there's a one near the bedroom. So, again, you in any of your fire departments can help you with a probably, probably not only providing if you can't afford one, but properly setting them up within the house. Where should they be? There's a lot of agencies and stuff that can help with that. But having the smoke detector working, having a carbon monoxide detector, which is a little bit differently, but again, you're overseeing a heating season usually depending on where you're from if you're up here. It's heavy heating season. So again, having a carbon monoxide detector also should be a working fire extinguisher. Again, me coming from my background. I have one hanging in my bedroom. I mean, that's the door I'm going out. If the smoke detectors off and it's not going to do me any good to be and down the hallway to get to my my doors leading from my house without having an extinguisher in my hand if I get a smoke detector going off. So, I have one hung in my bedroom wall, fairly large one. And then I have one at the base of my stairs. You know, not something my wife really wanted with her décor, but she's got an extinguisher at the top of the stairs. So, in the event that that's the direction that I may decide to head, given the conditions, I mean, again, overall, you want out. So if you have young kids have a fire plan, they know how to get out of the house, not by the hallway only, but if they can't, they know exactly what you want them to do in the event they cannot get out of their bedroom, you know, safely. The biggest thing I've pretty much taught my kids and my family, you know, sleep with your door closed, you know, keep the door closed, because, again, we usually show the children in our community. You know, each and every year they get an understanding, you know, how fast a house can can fill with smoke. And you don't want you know, when you hear that smoke detector go off. You only have seconds. And if the door's open, you're going to start to impinge on that sleeping quarters, which is black to begin with. Dark. So now, you know, you want to be, you know, give me given you a chance. So, you know, keep the doors closed, keep a smoke detector there. You know, have a fire extinguisher on hand, have an emergency plan for the family. Once they get out. Know what to do, where to go. Because again, you've got to be thinking about temperatures. You gotta, you know, where are the neighbors? How close are they? Who's accessible for help? You know, and so everybody, you know, get a head count, get help on the way, get a place safe for the family to go get warm. Those types of things. Now's the time to be thinking about those before before an incident ever does happen. Peter Koch: All excellent suggestions. And in addition, a lot of people, because of an insurance plan or building code, already have the fire extinguisher or smoke detector. However, how do we know that those tools we expect to help us in the event of a problem will work as we expect? You mentioned this before. Testing these tools for function should be a key part of household and workplace safety. It matters if the alarm goes off, but it also matters that the people affected by the alarm can hear the alarm. Hartley Webb: Yeah. Correct. And it doesn't hurt. You know, try it some evening. Just go test the thing after everybody’s gone to sleep and just see how everybody reacts. And it's an eye opener because, you know, I had my children aren’t home anymore, but I have 2 kids that would pop right out of bed and do what was required. And then I have, you know, my youngest boy who, you know, you could set everyone off in the house and he won't even roll over in bed. So, you know you, that you have to know that beforehand and prepare for that cause somebody’s got to go get him, because the smoke detector, he won't even know because they've gone off. But I've got backdraft on the woodstove or something. And, you know, every mine are all wired. So, when one goes off, the whole house goes off. And I've had the whole house go off and my son wasn't even aware. You know, they were going off for like 10, 15 minutes. So, they you've you've got to be able to, you know, plan for that in the event that that happens, because somebody's got to go get him. Peter Koch: Yes, that's a great point. So even if you've tested them, make sure they're all functional. Can people who need to hear them actually hear them? Do you have an emergency plan that covers all the people or positions necessary? Cause if you think about it, we're not just talking about normal, everyday operations. If you're adding a big display, then you might be adding a lot of electrical load and equipment to that house or business. So, if you're adding or increasing the potential for problems, you need to make sure that everything is working appropriately. The smoke detectors and fire extinguishers all need to be there, and they all need to be inspected and top-of-the-line so that they're going to work when you need them to work. Hartley Webb: And we've been talking a lot about electrical here with these displays. But one of the things that I see that's more common now is a lot of the live live candle type displays interior for the holiday and that goes the same thing. You know, again, have some type of routine, but do not go to sleep. Do not go to bed while those things are still lit. Peter Koch: Great plan. Fantastic. Well, I think that just about wraps up this week's Safety expert podcast brought to you by MEMIC. I really appreciate you sharing all your expertise with us, Hartley. You have any final comments or tips that you want to leave with our listeners? Hartley Webb: When the holiday is all done. Probably the most important thing you can do when you put the displays away, pack them neatly, pack them organized. Cause a lot of times a lot of the damage from a lot of the electrical a lot of that is done during the during the packaging for the off season. So, take the time, pack it in a manner that's going to prevent damage for the following year. Other than that, just hope everybody has safe holidays and enjoys the season. Peter Koch: Fantastic. I really appreciate that. Hartley, thanks for joining us today. And to all of our listeners out there. We've been speaking with Hartley Web safety management consultant with MEMIC about Holiday Safety Fales and Fixes. If you have any questions for our guests or would like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast, email us at podcast@MEMIC.com. This podcast is presented by MEMIC, a leader in workers compensation insurance and a company committed to the health and safety of all workers. To learn more about MEMIC and how we can help your business. Visit MEMIC.com. Don't forget about our upcoming workshops or webinars and for upcoming dates and for what topics are out there. Visit MEMIC.com and check out our Safety Academy. You can find the podcast here on i-Tunes or right here at MEMIC.com. If you have a smart speaker, you can tell it to play the safety experts podcast and you can pick today's episode or even a previous episode. You can also enable the Safety Experts podcast skill on Alexa to receive safety tips and advice from our any of our episodes. We appreciate you listening and encourage you to share this podcast with your friends and co-workers. Let them know that they can find it on their favorite podcast player by searching for safety experts. Thanks for tuning in to the Safety Experts podcast brought to you by MEMIC. Remember, you can always learn more by subscribing to the podcast at MEMIC.com/podcast. Peter Koch: Hey, this is Peter Kotch, host of the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast, wishing everyone a safe and healthy holiday season. And in order to help you along the way, the team here MEMIC has put together a list of safety related gifts which can help your friends and family members arrive at the next family gathering or holiday party cast free and with whatever parts they still have intact. It's the time of year again when we start projects, decorate the house for the holidays, clean our walking paths, make gifts, cook and generally make ready for good cheer that accompanies the holidays. At work, our employers help us to stay safe by providing equipment that helps to reduce our exposure to workplace hazards. However, at home we don't have that, and that could put us at risk by our own choices. And I bet if you haven't yourself, you know someone who has cleared snow from a roof without fall protection or cleaned out the chute of a snow blower by hand without shutting it down first, or worn your indoor shoes across an icy driveway because it will only be this just once, or you've run stock through a table saw without the guard or had your ears ring after using a leaf blower, a mower, or some other power tool for a while, or maybe cut your finger prepping food for a holiday meal or jump the car battery for a friend without safety glasses. Really pick a task, any task. And there is a piece of kit that you can and probably should use to help protect yourself from the inevitable. So, I asked our team here at MEMIC to give me some of their favorite possibilities for safety related gifts. And here's what they came up with. Guest Caller: Hey Pete, this is Richard. Idea for a safety gift, would be cut resistant gloves, to protect your hands. Guest Caller: Hi Pete, it's Natalie. My idea for a safety gear is a push stick to use with a table saw. Guest Caller: Hi Pete, it's Mike. My suggestion is the microjig push-blocks for table saws. From a personal experience, my father recently sustained four stitches in his finger because he got his fingers too close to his table saw. So, this was my gift to him. Guest Caller: Hi, Pete, this is Tony. My idea of a safety gift is a set of safety chaps for the chainsaw operators. Guest Caller: Hi, Pete, this is Tom. My idea for safety gift is an A.B.C. rated fire extinguisher for home use. Guest Caller: Hi, Pete. This is Rob. My idea for a safety gift is a pair of ice cleats that don't have to be taken off when I walk inside. Guest Caller: Yeah, Hi, Pete, this is Greg. My idea for a safety gift, which is actually an ergonomic gift, would be an economically priced vertical mouse for anybody that might be starting to develop a little bit of tennis elbow or a lateral epicondylitis. Guest Caller: Hi, Pete, this is Jason. My idea for a safety gift is a roof rake to allow snow to be removed from your roof safely. Another great idea for a safety gift that I hope to receive this Christmas is a pair of traction devices to be worn with my winter boots to ensure that I maintain good traction. Guest Caller: Hey, Peter, it's Barrett. I'd really like one of those fancy awesome ski helmets like you wear for Christmas to keep my head safe on the slopes. Guest Caller: Hi, Peter. This is Esther Murray and I'm calling to give you my safety idea. Number one, we need to have a small collapsible step stool. Those cost in the neighborhood of $20. The second tool, called the Handy Bar. It fits right into the strike on the car door. And you can help your elderly parent into the car by having them grab onto the Handy Bar. Those two tools may make it easier to take and transfer our elderly parents hither and yon. Guest Caller: Hi, Pete. It's Dave Darnley in Buffalo, New York. My idea for a safety gift. It's a winter car safety kit. Guest Caller: Hi, Pete, this is Susan. This has to do with winter driving and things that you should put in a safety kit for your car. Number twelve, a pair of boots. Eleven, a change of socks. Ten, a first aid kit. Nine, jumper cables. Eight, flashlight and batteries. Seven, cell phone chargers. Six, hats and gloves. Five, roadside flairs. Four, a warm blanket. Three, bag of salt. Two, ice cleats, and an ergonomic shovel for snow. Happy holidays. Peter Koch: Links to information on some of these items can be found in the show notes for this episode. Check them out. If you're looking for some great gift ideas. Last, if you go to MEMIC.com/podcast and enter your email to sign up for podcast updates before December 23rd, 2019. You'll be entered into a drawing for a set of in-step ice cleats. Winners will be chosen after December. 23rd. And announced in the first MEMIC Safety Experts podcast episode of 2020. Tune in then to find out if you've won. Good luck. And from all of us here at MEMIC, be safe this holiday season.   Resources, Ideas and People Mentioned in Podcast   Hartley Webb, Safety Management Consultant - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/hartley-webb MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/ MEMIC’s Safety Experts Podcast - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-experts-podcast MEMIC Safety Net Blog - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-net-blog A Christmas Story - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/ National Safety Council of Northern New England - https://www.nscnne.org/ Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) - https://www.osha.gov/ Certified Safety Professional (CSP) - https://www.bcsp.org/CSP Central Maine Power (CMP) - https://www.cmpco.com/wps/portal/cmp/home/!ut/p/z1/hY7LDoIwEEW_hQVbOqSo4I4YhBDQGF_YjQFTC6ZQUir8vo0aExMfs5u5554MIihDpMn7iuWqEk3O9X4g4yO20yByZrBwU8eDlYOTbRjuYO7ZaP8PIDqGL-OD7pM78jIs1zHWBifYRHaI7XjyBH44YkQYF8XjXb8psMsQkfRMJZXWVepzqVTbTU0wYRgGiwnBOLVOojbhU6UUnULZO4naOoPLiPeJbxg3t9mK_g!!/dz/d5/L2dBISEvZ0FBIS9nQSEh/ Ground-Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) - https://www.google.com/search?q=ground+fault+circuit+interrupter&ie=&oe= Ohm’s Law - https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/dccircuits/dcp_2.html UL Listed - https://marks.ul.com/about/ul-listing-and-classification-marks/promotion-and-advertising-guidelines/specific-guidelines-and-rules/ Canadian Standards Association (CSA) - https://www.csagroup.org/testing-certification/product-listing/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F Safety Gift Ideas: Cut Resistant Gloves - https://www.google.com/search?q=Cut+resistant+gloves&ie=&oe= Push-Stick for Table Saw - https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNQW4P8BfQ46fNIqcYzULHc1w6R6KQ%3A1574455269788&ei=5UfYXcTUL-KyggeOvJ2oCQ&q=push+stick+for+table+saw&oq=push+stick+for+&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0l9j0i333.35801.37644..39834...0.3..0.236.2502.0j14j1......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71j35i39j0i273j0i131j0i20i263.L8IlbYWVn5A Microjig Push Blocks - https://www.microjig.com/content/push-blocks Chainsaw Chaps - https://www.google.com/search?q=chainsaw+chaps&ie=&oe= A B C Extinguisher - https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNTwOS4u-KoldhO8T7AXsaaGmLnTCQ%3A1574455397206&ei=ZUjYXcyJDIfH_Qbpg5PQCw&q=abc+extinguisher&oq=abc+extinguisher&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i7i30l10.7455.7953..8556...0.1..0.216.595.0j1j2......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71.-Psm1iO_VFs&ved=0ahUKEwiM0Ki11_7lAhWHY98KHenBBLoQ4dUDCAo&uact=5 Ice Cleats - https://www.thecuresafety.com/K1_Mid_Sole_Ice_Traction_Cleats_Pair_p/k1mid.htm Vertical Mouse - https://www.google.com/search?q=vertical+mouse&ie=&oe= Roof Rake - https://www.google.com/search?q=roof+rake&ie=&oe= Ski Helmet - https://www.google.com/search?q=ski+helmet&ie=&oe= Small Collapsible Step-Stool - https://www.google.com/search?q=small+colapsable+step-stool&ie=&oe= Handy Bar - https://stander.com/product/3001-handybar/ More gift ideas - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-net-blog/2017/december/memics-safe-gift-guide

Today's podcast I'm focused on the bridle, which includes the head stall, bit chinstrap and reins. First, I'm gonna give you five things to consider. Then I'm going to answer a listener question that was e-mailed in to me. And finally, I'm going to take you on a virtual walk through a tack store with a friend of mine where we will discuss all the options you will have when you walk into a tack store. I'm reminded again that this can be a really complicated subject.  I'll break it down here and I'm going to make some videos that will help you to those will be posted on my YouTube channel and on my website.     

Continuing with our focus on men's health this month, we've got Nick Perry on the show. Nick works as holistic lifestyle coach and a corrective exercise specialist. With a special interest in men's health, Nick loves to take a holistic approach. Exploring the relationship between the physical, spiritual, mental and emotional bodies and how they relate to sexual health and our expression of life in general. Today is a juicy one folks! Tune in to hear Mason and Nick journey through the multidimensional landscape of sexuality and libido. Nick and Mason discuss: Libido as a messenger, what is your body trying to tell you? Personal practice and self inquiry as pillars of health and wellness. Sexuality and sexual practice. Insecurity and cock shame. Self love, what does that term mean for each of us individually? How libido serves us beyond the bedroom.   Who is Nick Perry? Nick Perry is a Holistic Lifestyle Coach, Corrective Exercise Specialist and Remedial Massage Therapist who is passionate and driven by authentic relating and inspired living. Nick’s education in Corrective Holistic Exercise Kinesiology (CHEK) draws from personal mentoring and learning from some of the world’s leading healers and physical therapists. Known for his deep presence and down-to-earth nature, Nick’s goal when working with clients is to leave them feeling empowered and aligned in themselves - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.     Resources: Nick's Website Nick's Instagram Nick's Facebook ManKind Project Australia   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 Taylor: (00:00) Nick. Thanks so much for being here with me in Brovember. Nick Perry: (00:04) Thanks for having me, Brother. Mason Taylor: (00:06) I was trying to kind of tracking back and trying to figure out how, we've known each other since back in the days of the Frenches Forest Market. Nick Perry: (00:13) Frenches Forest Markets. That's what I was going to say. That was the center point for us. We were kind of like ships in the night. Nick Perry: (00:20) Our paths would cross, we'd dig each other's vibe but that- Mason Taylor: (00:24) A word wasn't passed.. Nick Perry: (00:27) Stop, that bro down never happened, did it? You know when it was, you might not remember this, but the first time that we got a moment together was at a flower, that was like a Shamanic Dance ceremony and Carmen Moratas what was running it and I got to chat with you and it was literally like weeks before you moved up and started this Odyssey of yours, coming up here. That was the time where it was like sick [crosstalk 00:00:54]. Mason Taylor: (00:54) I brought my mum. Nick Perry: (00:55) [crosstalk 00:00:55] your mum, yep. Mason Taylor: (00:56) Brought mum, and I had just gotten back from Peru where I bumped into Carmen at Machu Picchu. We had that kind of connection going on, which was amazing because it kind of made Machu Picchu for us, and she gave us the Coca leaf and taught us how to sit there in prayer specifically on that mountain, and the spots to do it and how to weave in your intention in your prayer. Until I got back and Adrian, you know Adrian, the human flower? Nick Perry: (01:21) Yeah. Mason Taylor: (01:22) As soon as you said flower I was like, all right, it's something that Adrian was at. Nick Perry: (01:25) He was definitely there. Mason Taylor: (01:27) Actually remind me, I've got some of his new Agua Florida, which is called Medicina, the flower water, just ceremonial flower water, the ones coming out of Peru often like petrochemicals. Nick Perry: (01:38) The yellow bottle. Mason Taylor: (01:39) The yellow one where we all have, you've sat in ceremony, you have that memory of just having it like spat all over you. They've got one that's just pumping, it is incredible. I'll give you some after but finally, we're actually getting a good chance to sit down and chat. Do you want us to give everyone a bit of a rundown of what you get up to with yourself? I'm sure that can be succinct if you want in general, but I'm sure it'll kind of come out in the wash in the interview. Nick Perry: (02:06) I suppose. I'll just give a little bit of background about myself for context's sake. I'm not just some dude. My name's Nick Perry. I work as a holistic lifestyle coach and a corrective exercise specialist. In the last couple years, I've been very involved in men's work specifically. The way that I like to operate is very holistically. It just absolutely makes sense to me to factor in and to explore and to incorporate things of matters of spirituality, of the emotional bodies, of the mental body and the physical form and how we live and relate in this plane of existence with one another. That's my jam and that's my deep passion, and everything that sort of offshoots from that. I'm like nutrition for example. I heard you say earlier on when we were chatting, like hormonal regulation and some of the feedback of life shows up in so many different ways. Biochemistry is just one of the myriad. I like to get around things in a very holistic sense. That's sort of how I work and what I'm interested in. Mason Taylor: (03:18) There's a couple of things you'll touch on then. I think it'd be really nice to be able to come down back to a pillar, you know there's many pillars, a pillar in this chat. If we can keep on coming back to that concept of libido and rather than widening everyone's perspective and men's relationship with what that is deepening the concept. I feel like that'd be a nice place to continue to come back to. Especially, I wouldn't mind getting into, what I think is really fascinating is that integrative, that conversational aspect of body, emotions, your intellect and your mind and then your spirit, your essential cells. I got something I'd definitely recently, I feel like I've gotten a bit more conversation between all those aspects in myself and, but just over the years, that's always been my biggest trip up, in where my deepest patterns can come over and just start ruling my life is when I have this huge inner turmoil, when fighting between these two segments of my life. Especially if one's run off. If my mind and my morality and my logic is run off and created an identity for myself. Mason Taylor: (04:25) Then I realize that I've gone too far and I don't know how to get back. That can happen with diet, that can happen with ideology, or whatever it is. You come off center, naturally for me especially when you get a little bit older, you see that's going to be one of the core things that starts bottoming out libido, right? Nick Perry: (04:44) Most definitely. That's a beautiful, I suppose entry into what we're talking about because libido is feedback, and it's nice because it's very clear. It's either we're turned on or we're not. If we became a bit more objective around that, and removed the stigmas and the definitions of, I'm horny or I'm not horny, and became more observant of our own inner libido, we can actually nurture a very healthy relationship with a low libido and see the value in that as a feedback mechanism. It's like, okay, I'm noticing that my life force has decreased, to the point that my body has in a way decommissioned my sex drive. That's a gift, that's one of the most loving things the body could do for us is to say, "Hey, pay attention. Where are you making your choices from? Why are you burning the candle so low? Whose values are you expressing?" It can be our home base, it can bring us back in. The thing that I really like about libido and sex drive is, it's a difficult one to repress or to ignore. It screams us- Mason Taylor: (06:02) That's a good point. Nick Perry: (06:03) ... to the face particularly because culturally we're so, to a degree sexually geared, and then biologically we're sexually geared obviously, which is what we are speaking to now. Instinctually we're sexually geared as well, to honor high libido but also to honor low libido is a very valuable thing to cultivate for every single individual in my opinion. Mason Taylor: (06:28) You mean the state, the fluctuating nature within ourselves or in different men in different situations? Nick Perry: (06:35) I think just as a simple barometer, as a simple feedback tool. I know, for example, I use myself as an example. I know if I'm horny, I'm well rested, you got it? If I don't have sex drive, or the desire to ravish, then that's an indicator to me that my Qi's running low. That I've kind of betrayed myself to an extent in that I've traded in my health for some other sort of gain. I've lost the awareness, and I've lost the equilibrium and that low libido is indicating that to me. It helps me refine my center, reflect on the choices that I've made over the last four weeks, for example. Then I get the opportunity then, to cultivate a more honest relationship with myself and the intention that's driving my actions. A pattern for me, subconsciously, which is sort of an expression of my wounded is overcompensating. Nick Perry: (07:39) I get to reflect and check in, fuck over the last month, has my inner child really been in the driver's seat or has it been more of my king energy. As my warrior and my lover of being present with me and my inner father figure for example. Or did I lose awareness and fall into that old way of being and the overcompensatory pattern that's mine. I see it in a lot of other people that I work with, and friends and family and whatnot. We've all got our thing, that's going to create outcomes, and it's an inauthentic way to live and be and relate. I need feedback to be able to see that. That's the wisdom of the body speaking to me. It does that in a myriad of ways. The libido is a very loud and clear one for me where, I know, I've been unaware or unconscious in my decisions and actions for some time because for it to get to a stage where my libido is dropped, it takes a bit. Mason Taylor: (08:39) Especially to overcome like biological markers as well, that would be there because you've essentially, this is really important. I know you talk about these pillars a lot, and I think we should probably get to it later in the chat. Hydration, movement, diet, breath, so on and so forth. All these things, which are so paramount, if you're rocking those, because we've both been patterned to just making sure that those things are rocking. Hydration, actually speaking of hydration, I'll pop some molecular hydrogen in your water there. Hydrogen, super antioxidant. However, that stealth anti androgenic libido smasher, I [inaudible 00:09:20] point to like, I can definitely speak for myself, those emotional patterns and those intellectual patterns you start taking on during childhood and start running wild. Mason Taylor: (09:28) Definitely got mine emotional, but even if I go to an intellectual pattern, for me that was just really thrashing lately. In the last couple of years even, was that what I've been trying to really get a handle on it and what emerges if that's in its place, is that trying to control how I'm perceived by other people at all times. Obsessively in thinking that maybe the mind is in any intellectual, get bored of this and get atrophied after a while. It's just not, I'll just keep on sucking all your energy and that what eventually happens is, we start leaking the Jing. If you don't have, you keep going with your lifestyle and keep on getting enough daily Qi to kind of keep on feeding this addiction, this way of being, or for me, I'd say it was a dysfunction when it's excessive, as you were saying as well with your emotional wounded child, but then at some point it starts leaking Jing. Mason Taylor: (10:20) If you're already walking on eggshells as well, that's going to just immediately just suck up all that libido and all those sexual juices and that, it's all right, so in that. Because that's for me, I realize I'm getting a little bit older, a little bit wiser. I've got my daily practices of breath, I'm working, we went down to the little gym area we've got here at SuperFeast, there's things to be doing, but what's the center? I don't give a shit about superficial outcomes anymore. I don't give a shit about achieving certain elements of flexibility and strength or endurance things anymore. That always led me to those inner patterns and that disharmony between my mind and my emotion that led me to that place where I would slowly be leaking Jing, and maybe I could still get it up, but it's still, I wasn't really able to embrace that fiery sexual essence of myself. Mason Taylor: (11:13) In that nature of chop wood, carry water consistency, what are you doing daily or what are your greatest takeaways from your journey so far that are allowing you to come back into harmony, daily so that you're getting to the source of what's possibly wiping out that essence to begin with? Nick Perry: (11:32) It's easier when we have rituals, and when rituals are tailored right. When we figure out what's right for us because the one I'm about to say, I'm not dogmatic about, what I'm about to share of my own rituals is what I have experimented with for a lot of years and had support in and it comes from a range of different ideologies and modalities, like TCM, man, the Taoists wanted to live forever. Mason Taylor: (12:00) Some schools. Nick Perry: (12:01) Yeah. Their practices are really enjoyed. Then it's like some of the Tantric stuff and the yogic stuff and it's about, and then my own sort of creative flow and expression. But, when I wake up in the morning, for example, what I find works for me is checking in with my thought forms. That's super important. Checking in like is fear alive in me? Am I starting the day with fear alive in me? If it's there, to not reject it but to inquire, like what am I afraid about? What am I anxious of? Where is this projection coming from? That would be my first port of call in entering into the day, making sure that I'm making it, taking actions that conducive to a high libido. That's where it begins. Next thing, it's like a little detox ritual that I like to do. Like tongue scraping, that's an Ayurvedic thing. Mason Taylor: (12:55) Hard hitting questions, copper or stainless steel? Nick Perry: (12:58) Oh, stainless steel. Mason Taylor: (13:02) I don't know which dosha that means that you have, but anyway [crosstalk 00:13:08] Nick Perry: (13:10) No, breathing and then hydration. There are those pillars. Breathing in, water and thoughts reign supreme as the top three. That's where I start. Mason Taylor: (13:19) When you're doing your, looking at your thought forms, I say this because you mentioned you were a wounded child when your inner child, which is I get to be reductionist about it is very much about feeling states. Do you tune in? Do you have a personal method for tuning in to how you're feeling, of a morning or is that something more that you find is consistently working on throughout the day? Nick Perry: (13:38) How do I access the awareness of those quieter pieces and those subconscious pieces? My way is through the body. I'll notice typically, if I have a bit of a trajectory fear, my energy goes, and it stays from my neck up and it's sort of sitting around my head. What I do is I consult all corners of my body. Just with the breath, that's how I direct my intention. I'll breath down and I'm like, Oh, I can't breathe into my solar plexus. It's so tight right now, it's gripped with fear. I'll just breathe in and start to sort of mobilise the energy and the physical symptom of that energy until it starts to sort of open and soften and let go. Then I'm like, what was that about? It's through the body that I make that inquiry. Rather than notice that my head's busy first thing in the morning, it's a new day, that I've pulled yesterday in today, you know, that's a bit weird what's going on. Nick Perry: (14:43) I can't really unravel that or redirect that from the head space, so I need to come back down into the body and kind of get the circulatory system, all that energy in motion, make sure it's moving and not hyperactive in certain areas or underactive in certain ways. Hopefully that answers your question. Mason Taylor: (15:02) It's such a broad question. It does answer it. I was just curious in your little tag. It's something I really noticed my own, if I'm going to trip up, it's because I'm not taking, at least if I don't have that practice present and I don't have that dedicated time, I'm very good at constantly, throughout the day, tuning in and checking out what's going on. But if life's too busy, that doesn't work, creating that spaciousness and they come in every tradition, whether it's Taoist or Yogic or Shamanic or indigenous anywhere and everywhere, including psycho spiritual, they're always having a spaciousness to do the same thing every day where, and my acupuncturist is just kind of like really getting in and tuning at the moment in terms of that, you want to know what chop wood and carry water is? Mason Taylor: (15:48) Imagine you're fucking chopping wood for the rest of your life. It's not going to always be super insightful. You are literally getting an insight. The whole nature of enlightenment is letting go of that insight and going back to the mundane of chopping that wood. It's not that exciting anymore. That concept is the same as when you tune in every morning, what's going on with your emotions and feeling in or however it is through your body. You said, then, when you like doing your release of your diaphragm, that feel and then you heard that, what's going on there? That might just seem like a rhetorical question, but I think what I can feel is that, that wasn't a rhetorical question. That's like an actual, alright, come on what's going on in here? What am I feeling? Mason Taylor: (16:26) That's always my little, if I trip up, it's if I don't have that time where I go, I think you're saying, that's what I like, I do wake up in the mind, all right, what's going on and where are these thought falls coming from? What do I need to do to bring freedom to that space? Then how am I feeling? How am I feeling? Then how's my body feeling? That's something I've been... you bringing this up, there's four aspects of self, and I'm turning up to my practice for me at the moment, and just really stopping and seeing and feeling what the body needs when it gets to that back clear point. Mason Taylor: (16:58) That has been the most incredible thing for the depths of my libido in that, allowing the emotions to be felt, allowing my intellect to actually be acknowledged. Then what's coming through, is that melting pot in that refinery of then the spirit coming through. But I just wanted to hit that, because next, then just get your little tidbits on that. That's rad. Mason Taylor: (17:20) Then we're going on to the fact that we're talking libido. We've opened up talking about this. A lot of people know Juliet Allen, your partner, your lover, because she's been on the podcast previously and three half years ago, four years ago, she was on my podcast and the SuperFeast once was the most listened to podcasts, it was a great podcast. Just talking about all the things, talking about hand jobs, talking about- Nick Perry: (17:43) All the cool things. Mason Taylor: (17:44) ... talking about all the cool things, talking about sexual cultivation. Everyone loved it. But now we've chatted about these concepts of having these parts in ourselves that can be fractured, coming together and unifying and being tended to. Basically what I wanted to talk about now that we've talked about that, for everyone to know it, but that's the first place we've started in talking about libido. Mason Taylor: (18:06) Now, let's start talking about the fact that there's some guys listening. They'll be like, whoa, your longterm partner is a sexologist, one of Australia's most respected sexologists, and she's very avert and like Juliet, anyone who has listened to her. Now you're dating a sexologist. We're talking about libido. Where does the conversation go now? You mentioned before one of the things that, it pops up in our minds, what was it like in the fucking beginning, man? Were you thinking, shit! Were you trying to pull out techniques? Were you going back and reading the book, She Comes First? Was it just like, you just have to just throw it out and just assume that she'd be conscious enough to not judge you or did you have a process to actually get into a place of self love where you didn't feel any of those fears or anything? Mason Taylor: (18:54) Because I think what we're all talking to here or we're projecting that onto you, which I think I would probably, I can get the part of myself that would be thinking about that. We start touching on what you were speaking about earlier, is those unspoken social taboos or concepts or pressures that we have on ourselves and our own cocks and our own sexual performance there. That's what I assume where these questions towards you would be arising from, and maybe just a little bit of curiosity as well. If you wouldn't mind, let's open up that can of worms. Nick Perry: (19:23) It's a cool one. I want to make it as transparent and honest as possible. Just for the sake of that. How did I feel when we first... reflecting, I wasn't overthinking it at the time. For me, in the early stages of hooking up before it was an established relationship. Actually you know what, there was definitely a part of me that was thinking bring your A game. Mason Taylor: (19:55) It's just as simple as that boys. Nick Perry: (20:00) Definitely. Actually that's cool because I've kind of, where our relationship's evolved to now is just very expansive and it's more, I suppose there's a lot of other pieces in there, but early stages, how was it? All right. Ah, I haven't divulged this before, but I will because it's true, right? I came across Juliet, I'd heard of her work and I had just recently started getting quite involved with tantra and tantric practices. Anyway, I came across her Instagram and slid into the DMs. That's where it starts, I was like, "Oh wow-" Mason Taylor: (20:41) Is that, you guys tuned in on Instagram? Nick Perry: (20:42) ... I was like, wow, this is a really interesting woman. Mason Taylor: (20:46) That's how Tahnee and I met, on Instagram as well. Nick Perry: (20:49) For sure, it's like this is the age that we live in. It's possible to connect and initiate consciously through the social media platform for sure. That's what happened. I was like, there was a part of me that was almost, like there was a cheeky part of me that was like, "come on, have a crack." It was in our stories, and there was a Brian Jonestown Massacre song that I really like, and I was like cool, there's a relation point there, connection. Then anyways, so that's where the conversation started and then it fade away and for certain reasons and disappeared. But it was all cool. Then the universe sort of brought us back together and it came back up and then the day came when we had our first date and that was lovely. Then there was the second date where it was a bit like, okay, we've got that out of the way, now our true nature can come forward even more. Nick Perry: (21:48) She's very sexually geared, I'm very sexually geared. So there was the chemistry that took care of itself. But then there was the part of me that had this desire to perform. I think that's what you're asking, or where we're directing this is like, how conscious is that expectation that a man or a woman has on themselves to, "perform". What does perform mean? Because performance is defined by a plethora of assumptions. Those assumptions are established through how sex is portrayed to us from the moment that we're born, as this sort of really private taboo thing when we're kids, then we start to figure it out for ourselves as teenagers. It's a little bit more like raw and unconscious and- Mason Taylor: (22:47) ... Who knows what kind of patterns and stories we'd got if our parents weren't overtly loving each other, or if we saw them hiding it all. Seemingly just like, they watch porn or if we just walked in on them having sex and didn't have any context for it or anything like that. Who knows what pops up. Then as you're saying, you add in the societal elements to it because we're so prone to societal ideology and programming when we're young and gooey. What's the cocktail that comes out there? Nick Perry: (23:14) ... Exactly. It's like what's the cocktail and a cocktail is more potent and- Mason Taylor: (23:20) Hi, sorry, I had to say this, is it called a flaccarita? All right. Nick Perry: (23:26) Flaccarita? Mason Taylor: (23:27) You settle down, everybody. Come on, get serious. Nick Perry: (23:29) 10 deep breaths. It's about the unconscious way of relating and a sure way to down regulate polarity and chemistry in the sexual connection. Mason Taylor: (23:51) Can you say more about down regulating that polarity? Nick Perry: (23:54) Yeah. Think of attraction in terms of a positive charge and a negative charge. So you look at a car battery or any sort of electrical current, there needs to be a very much negatively charged pole and positively charged pole. That's how that arc happens. That's how that spark ignites. Mason Taylor: (24:17) You're talking about generally like the polarity between a man and a woman especially? Nick Perry: (24:20) Yes. We think of like negative, which is the drawing part of the current, pulling in as the feminine and the out, like the doing and the taking and the ravishing polarity as the positive, the masculine. What you will notice with, that awareness is like the most cosmic sex happens when there is a strong polarity in the room. When there's a strong polarity between two people. The point that I was getting at is what down regulates that magical cosmic charge is when we get stuck in our head. The times that we get stuck in our head, the worst is when the inner critic really comes through and really comes forward. Nick Perry: (25:19) To bring that back to the context of what you and I were just talking around, like society's definition of a good lover and the social pressure of, how long did you fuck for? How many times did she come? Say these things, these performance markers- Mason Taylor: (25:39) Are we able to go straight away afterwards again. Nick Perry: (25:42) ... Yeah, all that stuff. There is a space for that, but where's the conversation in the mainstream around the sex without penetration. Sex doesn't just include friction and penetration. There is ways to connect energetically that, like an example I'll give is for somebody who's really not following. It's like, have you ever sat in front of your lover naked, cross-legged and eye gazed for five minutes? Noticed how your breath synchronizes and notice how you feel. Either your cock or your pussy starts to tingle and you start to feel that sex center really awaken and really awaken and that charge gets really strong. If you can hold the breath, keep it cycling and circulating, typically you'll notice that charge goes all the way up and you start to really feel it in your chest, in your heart center. That starts to tingle, and that starts to open. Suddenly it's like you get to a stage where you feel that you are, you have penetrated the person sitting in front of you without the physical penetration per se having occurred. Nick Perry: (27:13) To bring it back to what we're speaking to, it's like the piece that I'm reflecting on for myself was how much of these tantric tools had I learned and how capable was I of applying that? My first, Juliet and mine first hookup, and how much of the old way of being stuck in my head and being goal-orientated and being more concerned about having the reputation of a mack, than actually having a deep intimate connection. Where was I? Where did I land in that? Somewhere in the middle, I reckon. Mason Taylor: (27:53) Did you feel like, because I can kind of like from personal experience, I don't know whether this is the case, especially in the beginning when the oxytocin is cranking as well, I feel sometimes the most virtuous aspects of ourselves can very naturally emerge. I feel after that honeymoon period for me burst and all those insecurities come crashing forth. That's, just to make sure that I'm not just talking about that initial stage for anyone listening as well or even for yourself. I just wanted to kind of put that out there as well, just in case that was something worth speaking to. Nick Perry: (28:32) That's arguably far more important to speak to, because everybody at least knows conceptually, or a lot of people have experienced the honeymoon stage. That is the newness of a relationship where that polarity takes care of itself, for the most part. There is so much charge and so much of that you'd like you say, oxytocin running through the bloodstream and then we become familiar with one another and we stop looking at each other through new eyes each day. That's where the demise begins I think. We create... the mystery and the wonder of the person starts to fade and we start to form an idea of them. If we're not conscious, most of those ideas are just projections of ourselves. Mason Taylor: (29:40) Or our parents. Nick Perry: (29:41) Yeah. Parts of us that, of our parents. Then we stop seeing them through new eyes and that aliveness and that magic and that wonder of the honeymoon stage fades. We typically fall into our old way of being again. Then, we've got this mirror in our life now, that if we don't take responsibility for ourselves, we start blaming them for the things in us that are unresolved or where we're feeling miserable or blind. What happens is, it's like we start to go into a familiar way of being, and it's like the thought and the emotion that equates to our state of being. That's thought forms, unconscious and conscious and the chemistry, the hormones that those thought forms signal. Then we've got this like cellular neurochemical identity and we've arrived back there. If we weren't fully in love with ourselves before the relationship, the relationship isn't going right to fill that hole, basically. If we're not cultivating connection and relationship where there is awareness and ownership of that, and structure where we can support each other in seeing that and resolving it for ourselves, then that's when toxicity forms. Mason Taylor: (31:20) What about... because self love is, I feel like almost a term, for me became quite cliche from the Instagram world. But I always, endeavour to not let my judgmental mind, just [inaudible 00:31:37] like sit there and go and go into the depths of what we're actually talking about about self love. I definitely, I feel like that's, I'm kind of getting the gravity of that lately. The extent and just how uncomfortable... I thought I was, maybe I'm happy to say I love you to my dad, but there's quite often something a little bit uncomfortable there. But the gravity of how uncomfortable I was really feeling in love with myself and not needing to be overtly... I've gone, had experiences just like trying to.. Trying to deepen my own sexual relationship with myself. Mason Taylor: (32:16) Again it was a little bit... that's something that may emerge from my self love. That's okay. But I was inherently, I guess that inherent shame of feeling how sexually, how much of a sexual man I am, which we all are [inaudible 00:32:31]. I shouldn't generalise like that, but a lot of us are and just feeling like what do I do with that? I'm so used to sending that out or that for game or using that to please someone else. What do I do with that much love, including what I now kind of feel is that sexual Yang energy. Mason Taylor: (32:49) What do I do with that..? What does that self-love look like? I think it looks very simple externally, but just anything to talk to in that process of you coming back to loving yourself, therefore not projecting onto your partner? Nick Perry: (33:06) Yeah. I'll put a scale to it I suppose. Because like you said, it gets thrown around Instagram a lot and it's like, oh, if you've got problems, just love yourself. It's like that's not helping. Mason Taylor: (33:23) Just have a self care Sunday. Nick Perry: (33:26) Totally. Mason Taylor: (33:27) Don't forget the bath. Nick Perry: (33:29) Oh, and the bath bomb and little glass of bubbly 80, 20 [crosstalk 00:33:33]. Mason Taylor: (33:33) You really love yourself. Nick Perry: (33:43) That's what we here to do. Loving yourself is your life's work and it's important to make that your center. Like that's your center. That's where you return to. I'll give an example, so this makes a bit more sense. There's lots of people championing and promoting and holding in high esteem, philanthropist work, being in service to others. So that's, when it's done unconsciously, is one, codependent, which is unhealthy. Two, the philanthropist work becomes the source of distraction for coming home to the authentic self, back to the heart temple. I want, because you mentioned the Instagram thing, I just wanted to drop that as well because self love is a very personal journey. Nick Perry: (34:49) We can review spiritual philosophy and we can get coaching and we can accumulate different tools through our toolkit. But the integration, the application and the exploration of the path of self love doesn't stop ever. If you get there in this lifetime, then you'll essentially ascend. Self love- Mason Taylor: (35:17) [inaudible 00:35:17] Don't worry guys, you'll get there and it's good, me and Nick liked it. Nick Perry: (35:19) That was super fun. It was cool hanging out with the Buddha. He's a cack... Mason Taylor: (35:24) He's all right. Nick Perry: (35:28) Oh hell no. Look, take it from me, anyone listening. I don't love myself, but I am on the journey. That journey requires acceptance of where I am. You can't take a step towards self love, without first accepting exactly where you are exactly as you are. Mason Taylor: (35:53) That extends to exactly how your body is. I think I've heard you talk, actually I've heard you talk to Juliet on your podcast about this. That felt familiar, accepting where your body is at, before you're taking a step into the gym or into your own personal practice. Accepting what your cock and your libido and your body, doesn't necessarily mean justification. Doesn't mean sitting there and just gorging on what, I accept this is how I am and that's it. I'm just going to sit here. [crosstalk 00:36:30]. Nick Perry: (36:29) It's not apathy. Mason Taylor: (36:29) No it's not apathy. But that's probably one of the most... that for me, or just you saying that, that brings up that wall of, "Oh, that's uncomfortable." Damn and what if you go beyond the superficial and you go to that part of yourself that in all reality, doesn't change, it's been constant through all the fluctuations of your body and your libido, through the last few decades. For most people that had been listening, and so, but by logic sake, there is something which transcends all of it. Because it's still in you, you have to have it in that relationship with yourself and that coming home to, even that consideration of who am I. What is love? What is that love and how does it, how do I relate to it within myself? And feeling that non pressured, what's it going to be like when I'm 80? Maybe this is... maybe when I'm 90 maybe this is a nice intention, speaking for myself now, it's a really nice way to go into my personal practice and my movement, or even my diet exploration and definitely my sex life. Even my relationship with my daughter. Mason Taylor: (37:37) Where am I coming from, from that place where, it may be when I'm looking at those things and when I'm 80 years old and feeling into those things that I have settled into, more of a loving place, whatever that happens to be, that's nice, slow and steady to engage, right? That's massive. You're saying it wasn't just sexual techniques when you first got together? Nick Perry: (38:06) But I'm saying it was too. Mason Taylor: (38:08) I was going to say, what's the 80-20 rule come back and apply again? Just as a general. 80% self love. Nick Perry: (38:17) For sure that's the acceptance piece, right? Acceptance of our shadows, because projection of our shadows, of our savage, of our tyrants, of our... just gives them more reign, more space to be calling the shots. I think sex is a vehicle for spiritual exploration, big time. Because there's those parts, sex, with all the stigma and the shame that just comes with the territory in our society and culture. It's kind of a private place to start to work on parts of the self that we wouldn't dare expose to anyone. Whenever I'm working with someone, and they're not sure where to start, the thing that I sometimes cue them with is, "What's the one thing you don't want me to know about you? What's the thing that you would be mortified to expose?" Nick Perry: (39:31) Take that idea and take it into the bedroom and do it consciously and hold space for your partner to do the same. Then there's this exploration, and there's this healing going on, but there's also an integration, because how we show up in the bedroom is how we show up to life. Mason Taylor: (39:50) Can I also say, because you're talking about communication there. Have you got an example? Even just made up, of something that you wouldn't want known and the kind of process of communicating that, or how you would hold space or request space to be held? Nick Perry: (40:09) Yeah. Well in the context of sex? Mason Taylor: (40:16) Yeah, let's look at that. Nick Perry: (40:21) Probably the obvious one to go to here is kink. Just as an example of where might somebody be suppressing themselves. That means where are they denying their truth, that this is what turns them on. Because maybe they'll be rejected. There'll be suppression of that and that suppression festers and turns into resentment to the other person, because they're not stepping out of the comfort zone and initiating a conversation around, "Hey, this would turn me on. How does that land on you and would you be into exploring this role play with me?" Nick Perry: (41:06) It's like, I want to choke you or we want to choke each other, for example. Somebody might be like terrified to expose that. How do you initiate the conversation? By first of all, know that it's not a good idea to just dive into it. To sort of stare yourself in the eyes in the mirror and just run out and say, choke me, whatever it is. A sentence that works for me is, when is a good time to talk to you about something that's important to me? It's not bad, because it's really respectful of the person. Mason Taylor: (41:52) Sorry about my weird. But I'm like, "damn, that's good." Nick Perry: (42:04) It gives time for that person to center themselves and to assume that the polarity of the space holder. They're not going to be in a reactive place and they know that you are going to go to more of a vulnerable space. That can be very, if you're the space holder, it can be like a ... I'll give you an example because, typically the feminine has a freer flow of emotion. It's actually, an access emotion and express emotion, and that's a generalization- Mason Taylor: (42:47) But I think that's a fair one. Nick Perry: (42:48) ... it's a fair one. We see evidence of that easily. Mason Taylor: (42:53) Just physiologically, governed by Blood and Yin versus men being governed by Qi and Yang. Nick Perry: (43:00) Right on. Imagine if you lived in that state. For a man to just cross the bridge and be like, how would that be? How would that be? It's actually a gift for a man to ask a woman to hold space for him to go into that emotional place in that feminine flow. Because then she gets a break. She gets to pause from being in that place and she gets to be, sort of occupied the voidal space in herself while she's holding space for you to go into that vulnerability or whatever's coming out that emotional charge to move that. Nick Perry: (43:47) Back to, how do you initiate a conversation like that? That sentence is a great one. To bring in, if you're not sure where to go, allow a playfulness to be present in the conversation and you can do that by just going, "Oh, I'm really nervous here. I want to talk about some things that turn me on that I haven't shared with you yet. I just love to just expose that to you and see if you'd be open to exploring that with me." Mason Taylor: (44:24) Dude so good. Couple of things popping up, first of all, the times when I've been there wanting to say that, it'd be nice to have that wording and as well as just, it's very obvious, but it's something that you forget when you're in your mind. Also, sometimes I feel like I've almost felt the pressure because one of my assumptions are, you need to know what you want as a man. Sometimes I just don't know what I want. In that instance of, say, if I was going to say in the instance of choking, I wouldn't be like, I don't know if that's what I want, but perhaps I'd like to explore. I feel like that, I would have liked to have known that ability to communicate. I'd like to explore this, without feeling that pressure that, this was my projection, that I'm going to get judged as someone who wants this when in fact I wouldn't mind if I knew that I wanted it, but maybe I don't want it. Mason Taylor: (45:19) I want to explore it and see where it goes. I feel like that's a huge piece just opening up that space to be able to share. Would be able to communicate. Would you also think that that's a similar thing if there's, if you have insecurities about size, performance, not being able to get it up, sometimes coming too fast and quite often when there are not even issues, they're just thing, I know I've had my things that have hung on despite the fact that the evidence been to the contrary, that I still to maintain as absolute truths, whether it's just through chatting with boys and then making assumptions. Or porn, when you're in your early teen years or whatever it is and it just sticks. Mason Taylor: (46:02) Was it working that same way? Do you find that approach of I wanted like something too important to talk to. When can we have a chat about something important? I just like to communicate this insecurity that's there. Nick Perry: (46:14) Oh my God, yes. That is such an amazingly expansive conversation to have. Such a gift that you could offer whoever you're sharing that with, the safety that that creates for that person to then divulge something that they've been holding on to, is then formed. You've just created a container in pushing yourself to expose that shame piece for you. The healing alchemy of that, in sharing that is, I'll give an example. Cock shame, lots of women, from the women I've discussed this with, aren't aware of how afflicted men are with cock shame. What I also want to add to that is, the shame that a man holds around his cock will directly impact his self esteem in every other aspect of his life. Nick Perry: (47:28) Men are holding back and they're not realizing that if you followed it in like what's the blockage? What's the limitation for so many males? Part of that is this perception they have of their cock and that their cock isn't good enough. That their cock isn't unworthy and that the cock is an appendage of the man. It's actually just, it carries into the rest of the being. The most amazing thing, and any brothers listening to this, just open your mind to exploring. If you maybe have some cock shame, is to go there and to speak to it. There doesn't need to be any fixing, or resolution that comes from it, but bring it out of the shadow and just name it. That is such an empowering fucking action to take. Mason Taylor: (48:34) You are saying, without that expectation or agenda on it being like resolved then as well. I think that's where my mind has put too much pressure on the sharing and wanting a resolution in that moment. That's where I've lost that motivation on continuously to just keep on bringing you into the light, sharing in appropriate ways. For bro's who are out in a relationship at the moment, you've got ways that they can go through that process for themselves? Nick Perry: (49:02) Yes. Ok there's a couple of things that just sprang to mind. Become responsible for who you surround yourself with. If you were around men who can't go there, then put yourself around different men who are willing to have that conversation, who are mature enough to hold space for that, who might be willing to lean into that for themselves and expose that, and have a very beautiful intimate healing relationship, friendship conversation around that. How can you do that? I'm part of a non for profit organization called ManKind Project, MKP. Without going too deeply into that right now, that is a, they hold men circles. It's global. It's all around, it's all around Australia. It's all around the world. It's online, they're called igroups, the men circles that they hold, there's online igroups. Nick Perry: (50:15) Literally, you can seek out the right environment and the right people and put yourself there, and push yourself to have the conversation. That is how you're going to step more into self love. Like we were saying, that's the trajectory of self love. That's the inconvenience of self love. It's not convenient to love yourself, because you got to drop, start dropping these defense mechanisms that have served you. They got you to where you're at, you're still alive. Mason Taylor: (50:46) It's not convenient based on the way that society is set up in the way we've kind of got that story about selves. How the propaganda machine is driven, the way that life needs to look for us. It's kind of completely go against grain of that and going with the grain of our spirit and our emotions and our integration, which is ultimately been like, life being more fun, and rad, and sexually potent more laughter and good parties and being able to fill your cup in terms of, we know your practice actually widening your cups so you can get out there and contribute to other people having a rad time in life. Mason Taylor: (51:22) I mean it would probably end with that, with men's circles, I think what some people, I see a lot of men, a lot of men around this area as well as, it's just like, I need to completely eject myself from all social circles that don't foster these kinds of conversation. Which I know you're not talking to but...Sometimes I feel like we take [crosstalk 00:51:39]. Nick Perry: (51:43) That's shadowy as fuck again. It's like going into, so thank you so much for bringing that up. Because what I'm saying is, if those relationships and environments aren't in your life, then choose to have them in your life and put yourself in them. That doesn't mean to scave and abandon and judge and condemn other men and brothers who might'n be making these inquiries just yet. We all have different degrees of readiness. There isn't a right or a wrong by any fucking means. There's no step in anybody's journey that isn't sacred or divine. It's like, the whole process is divine. Recognise the divinity in every person no matter where they're at. Mason Taylor: (52:40) That's like, that's ideology one-o-one. Going like, I'm ready to go down this route. Then, by all intents and purposes, you can look at a guy who's, maybe not doing that, but he's decided to take it upon himself to I don't know learn like carpentry or, go down the routes of like, mechanics or something like that and feeling that's something that he's exploring in himself right now. Then judge the shit out of you, because you're not actually taking the responsibility for your own car or house or whatever. It's all ideology. That's good. That's good stuff, it's spicy. Nick Perry: (53:17) Nice. There's just one little thing as well I want to say. Because recently, I had a trippy experience with this. Talking about the cock thing, the cock conversation. "I'm going to say it out loud and be seen and witnessed in speaking to the cock shame is a very healing way to transmute that shame. The other thing is, start to befriend your cock again. What I realised was my cock was a commodity to me. It was a commodity to me, and it was a burden. It was either a commodity or a burden. It's like I lost the shame. It messed up. Mason Taylor: (54:09) [inaudible 00:54:09]. Nick Perry: (54:10) Having a really positive relationship with your cock, how I... I had this experience a few months ago and I'd just done a sweat lodge and I was tripping and I came out and I was staring at the flyer and I was real head spinney and I sort of slumped over. I was slowly sorta like rolling up my spine, back to a standing position, I kind of went eye to eye, with my own cock. It was the first time I'd seen it, in a very long time where I was like, saw it beyond the flesh and artery that it is. I was like, Whoa and I really connected to what it does. It's like this part of me brings a lot of pleasure into my life. This part of me has the potential to create a human being to be a part of that birthing alchemy. Nick Perry: (55:23) This is my creative center. This is the sacral chakra essentially. All my ideas that have come into fruition were birthed from this energy center and then that rose up through me and came out and became an ecosystem, in reality. I kind of appreciated my cock consciously for the first time in a really long time instead of being just judgmental about it and non appreciative. One thing that is nice to start practicing is, it's a cock gazing. It's like, look at your cock, look at it, look at it in the mirror, stand up and look at it as yours, as a part of you. It's with you on this journey of life. Get it on site again. It's your friend, it's your mate. That's a personal practice that you can do on your own, that can have... just really develop awareness and actually it can develop awareness. Nick Perry: (56:47) It can expose how close your heart is to your own cock, or it can help you, which then becomes your priority, becomes your work or it can reconnect you to that, "Oh yeah. I fucking love, I love this fucking thing." Mason Taylor: (57:04) The cock can be the key to your heart. Nick Perry: (57:07) Totally. Mason Taylor: (57:10) It's true. Mason Taylor: (57:11) You can see exactly what that looks like. Nick Perry: (57:20) The circumference of my cock. I guess, we're laughing, but there's a degree of seriousness in there. Mason Taylor: (57:39) I think the laughing is a nice aspect to accompany the seriousness, because quite often another kind of thing that's unspoken, which is I just constantly observed myself as I have these peak experiences. Like you had a peak experience there coming out of ceremony and having that bang, whoa. Then not having, for a lot of men, like I said, I felt like this in the beginning, not realizing that it doesn't need to be at that peak experience state all the time. That it's just then it's like, ah, appreciation and that subtleness of that it's again the chop wood, carry water. You had your big pop moment and then you don't let it go, and just let that appreciation just seep in in very practical ways. Mason Taylor: (58:22) Even though it's possibly one of the most sacred relationships and there is an energetic reality to your Yang energy and your Jing energy and your energy of your cock and your libido emerging up and lighting up your heart so that your spirit can emerge. It's also very funny. Cocks and sex are very funny as well. You need to live your life. It's not all just some big hand on heart ceremony where you can go, then you go out of one societal taboo into a spiritual scene, sacred taboo, where you're not allowed to ever take the piss out of these things and actually live your life in accordance to who you are. There's someone in a way that's sustainable. Nick Perry: (59:05) Totally. I think it was Alan Watts that one of his quotes is, it's all just a cosmic joke. Mason Taylor: (59:13) Yeah fucking oath it is. Nick Perry: (59:15) It's an explosion of novelty and we're just picking up the parts of ourselves in this fucking, whatever this simulation that we're in, is [inaudible 00:59:30]. If you can't laugh, then you're totally missing the point. If you can't laugh at all of it, even the tragedy and the terror, then you're missing the point. Hell yes, such a great one to speak to. Mason Taylor: (59:44) Absolutely. With the tragedy, I mean, tragedy is tragedy. There's romance to tragedy at the same time. Likewise, there's tragedy of romance. But we don't have to trip out too much on that. But I think, because [crosstalk 01:00:01]. To bring us home, I just wanted to tune into something that I've heard you speak about, which is, if you want, I think quite often a gap I felt a lot of men would feel is we're able to just turn it on. We've got that Yang, we can just turn on and go, "Oh shit, didn't even realise I was horny." Perhaps it's a biologically driven horniness, perhaps not. Mason Taylor: (01:00:27) But the nature of, when you're in partnership and you are turned on by your life, then it makes it possible for you to be in that sexual dance, either with yourself or with your partner in at all times, every morning. Perhaps during the day, perhaps with texts, perhaps while making dinner, there is a continuation of your essence coming forth. It's not just you trying to be in foreplay at all times or trying to be sexy. It's an emergence an innate emergence because you are in fact turned on by your life. Mason Taylor: (01:01:08) I thought that when you were talking about that, I was just like, ah, yeah man. The concept of being turned on by the way you're managing your money, your job, your work, your contribution, your movement, whatever it is, is such a huge concept to all of this. I thought it'd be a nice way to take out talking about libido. Nick Perry: (01:01:33) Hell yeah, man. It's the feedback. It's kind of, we're coming around full circle. We're talking, we started with saying, libido is a very quick way to check in on where you're at spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally. When libido is down, that's a signal and you need to find what's out of step, what's out of balance. You'll get feedback when you are in making affirmative choices for your own authentic, for your uniqueness, for your own self. Because you will, you have sexual charge running through your body all the time. You'll feel turned on by the mundane. What would be seemingly mundane. It's like," Hmm, I'm going to ride my bike down and check the surf". It's just this enthusiasm and juiciness in that. You're exuding a high frequency basically. Nick Perry: (01:02:40) To make sense of that, and I don't think that we've touched on this overtly, but your sexual energy is your creative energy. If you are creating your day, if you have a blueprint for your life that you chose and that is construct of your own core values, that's exciting. That's sexy, because you're building your own kingdom and it's an extension of you. It's an expression of you. It's like, my creative energy is running and where I invest, it returns back to me, because it is an expression of what I value. It's this cyclic charge, like the microcosmic, orbital breathing. It's coming up the spine and down and back up. But it's like a closed chain cycle. Nick Perry: (01:03:40) That's why a high libido doesn't just indicate that you're horny and you want to fuck. It also can be a indicator that, I'm being true to me and the things that I'm investing my life force in and every minute of my life I don't get back. I'm exchanging my life for something that I value in return rather than working a job that you fucking hate. You're exchanging your life, like you're getting paid essentially because you're giving them your life. You gave up that company or whatever, eight hours of your life that you won't get back. Sure, you're getting paid for the labor or the skill. But to me, what's a more helpful context to review that from? Are you aware that you are investing your life into that person's project? Ok cool we've got that. Now, checking a little teapot. Nick Perry: (01:04:47) Do your values align with that person? Does that person's mission inspire you? No. Okay. Do you feel miserable rocking up to that place every day? Yes. Does the frequency not align with your frequency? Yes or no fucking shit. Is your sex drive dropping? Yeah for sure. Mason Taylor: (01:05:08) Even in that situation like again, taking those little steps, just trying to bring as much of your values and not being smothered by the external values of the workplace even, right? Giving it a good honest try and seeing if you can drive, bring your goodness and your love and lustre for life. Especially if it's a situation you don't feel it's actually that easy to get out of. Give it a real good, honest try. But I think you're right. If it's just all hell no's everywhere you look, it might be a stealthy kind of antiandrogen, but it's going to be an antiandrogen 100%. Then when then what are we looking at? We're looking at lowered bone density, lower muscle mass, lower mental acuity, and then just lower ability to actually connect with ourselves and lovers to be able to actually sit down and look your partner in the eye and not get skiddish, should your patterns to come up, to be able to even just do that for like a few seconds. Mason Taylor: (01:06:08) That all starts washing out in that excessive sacrifice essentially, just going with the flows of marketing and the corporate world, or just that traditional business model, which is just pure flat out and more, more, more. Nick Perry: (01:06:28) Consume, consume, consume. But for what? It's like, are you making love with the world? If you're not, know that, see that, and then give yourself three to five years to change that. Because, pretty much my point is, you're not getting, energy is not returning back to you day to day. For yourself, you're building an unbelievable kingdom and your company is a creation of your values and your passions. You rock up and you're surrounded by inspiration and you fucking embody life.That's probably the best description I could really choose for you right now. Is you are, you have a surplus of life force. You glow and that's- Mason Taylor: (01:07:43) Shucks... Nick Perry: (01:07:45) That's unbelievably inspiring. That's a self fulfilling prophecy of yours for whatever reason. But it is a product of the choices you made. The choices you made, lucky for you, whether it was conscious or unconscious, had this determination to incorporate your core values and your passion and stuff like that. You wear it. I see it. You have two podcasts, your ecosystem is enormous. Then you've got these other beings involved in that. These beings are beautiful people who I got to meet today, and they've got a lot of life exuding out of them and they've got a beautiful high frequency. They're on board with that. That's an indicator that, your sexual energy is running and flowing and you are giving birth, you've given birth to a human being. Nick Perry: (01:08:43) You haven't given birth yourself, but by, you know, your seed. You've given birth to this company. I'm sure there's other projects, you've got that little gym downstairs and it's like you've given birth to all these ideas. Those ideas have been projected out of the space in between your ears and into the world. Your sexual energy has given birth to that. That's how libido serves us beyond the bedroom. It doesn't need to be confined to sex, penetration, friction. Mason Taylor: (01:09:20) It's interesting, you just talking about the [inaudible 01:09:22], In that space because that, that connection is highly fit, has been known in theoretical and then that sexual energy is creative energy. Even just then acknowledging, there are creations here at SuperFeast on educating on the podcast and these things were, I can feel that creative essence and I can feel that satisfaction and joy there. Then tracking it back, to it's source, that's all just now, I've been a really nice practice for me to get in touch with the source of that creative essence and that sexual energy within myself. Also I appreciate the giving yourself three to five years saying that to the guys out there. This has been, there is a lot happening now, in SuperFeast which is happening exceptionally fast, because of how strong the foundations are and how many people are with the gym downstairs that comes together very quickly. Because I'm especially collaborating with Wazza who you've met. Mason Taylor: (01:10:23) We both had a creative outlet there. But then also going back and just seeing how all the hours of schlepping it, and accepting that meek, and that mundane and then over the years, possibly having appreciated as much as possibly can. You mentioned riding down, the checking the surf and just inquiring in those moments of how can those moments be infused with my essence and myself because it is always going for me. It's always a reflection that, I do have an external agenda right now that isn't representing my true inner intent. But that's just always biofeedback and experience and that, I think guys carry a lot of pressure. I'm going to do this. In one year's time, it hasn't all completely transformed on its head in but this is a practical thing, but it's worth speaking to that part of us that forgets this or maybe some boys listen to this and men listen to this. Kind of early on and I'm going to have that intense pressure on their self. Just nice and slow and steady consistency and it's your shit anyway. It's your journey anyway. It's your creativity anyway. You can't go wrong. Nick Perry: (01:11:40) You can't go wrong. Mason Taylor: (01:11:42) It's going to be shit at times when you take responsibility and you stop trying to flee certain things that you just know that you should be sorting out in your life. It might be boring at times and mundane, but if you've really set your vision in that direction that it's purely you, you will infuse those areas with life. You'll fuck them. What does fucking- Nick Perry: (01:12:08) Yeah baby that's right. Mason Taylor: (01:12:08) ... when you look at the world, you just said that. What comes to mind is what happens when you make love and you fuck in the way that it's purely you. You are connecting deeply. You're having an intensely pleasurable experience. You're learning about yourself, if it's self-pleasure, that's sex specially with your lover, they're learning about themselves and opening up, how are you fucking the world in that kind of context? I think, I don't know whether I heard you say that or maybe Juliet talking about fucking the world as well, but that's kind of really materializing that idea or that concept and the reality of that's what's going on. If our creative and therefore manifesting expression is emerging from our sexual energy, then get really conscious about how you're fucking yourself, your lovers and the world. Nick Perry: (01:13:00) Thank you man. That's such a beautiful elaboration and it just, it reminds me that there's breakup sex, there's wild sex. There's slow and intimate sex. There's kinky sex. In the bedroom, there's all these different ways to connect and relate. To keep that in mind that there isn't necessarily a right way to make love , in, like you said, in the creative process, in bringing your dream, materializing your dreams into reality, there are those really grindy days and that's just another way to fuck if you stay conscious. Then there's those really expensive elating days where it all comes together and that's another way to fuck. But yeah, if you stay connected to yourself, and stay accountable to your values and the blueprint that you've taken time to construct around, like what do I want my reality to look like and how is that going to make the world a better place and better the experience in this world for my loved ones? Yeah, go forth and fuck. Mason Taylor: (01:14:18) Yeah, I love it. On that, where can any men or women wanting to reach out, you're a holistic health coach. You work with people on many areas whether diet, functional movement, hydration, and then they're all leading back in entwining into this kind work and coming back to our genuine selves. Bringing together our emotional child, our intellect, body, spirit, anyone wanting to work with you. In that, I mean work with you one on one, but you also have a few offerings on your website, I believe. Where can they find you? Nick Perry: (01:14:57) One on one coaching or sometimes courses or workshops and stuff come through. Best place is either the gram, so that's Rhythm Health, R-H-Y-T-H-M Health or my website, which is rhythmhealth.com. That would be the best way. Hit me up with an email. DM me on Instagram, as you heard earlier sometimes you

Episode 70 of The Teaching Space Podcast is an interview with Oli Bailey-Davies discussing the use and impact of plenaries. Introduction Hello and welcome to the Teaching Space podcast. It's Martine here. Thank you so much for joining me. In today's episode I am excited to bring you an interview. I'm going to hand straight over to Oli and ask him to introduce himself to you, explain who he is, what he does and where he is in the world. Martine: Hello Oli. Oli: Hi, Martine. How are you? Martine: I'm well, thank you for joining me. Oli: Thank you for having me. Yeah, so I'm Oli. I'm a lecturer at the College of FE in Guernsey and I'm also the Artistic Director of a professional theatre company that's based at the college that I teach at as well. Martine: And what are we going to be talking about today and why? Oli: Today we have the exciting task of talking about plenaries and the impact of them on your students and on your classroom, I guess. And part of the reason I guess why you asked me to get involved in this is our college has just started a new observation kind of model, where we were asked to specifically think of one thing that we could impact our teaching or our students. We focused on that as part of our observation cycle. Mine was plenaries because I've always, since doing my teacher training sort of struggled with the concept of plenaries, especially in the performing arts context. I tend to stick them into my lesson plan and then never get to them. Yeah. So I decided to focus on effective plenaries rather than tokenistic plenaries. Martine: I'm excited to hear more about that. Bearing in mind the listeners to The Teaching Space Podcast will come from a variety of backgrounds, some will know what plenaries are and use them all the time. Whereas for some it might be kind of a newish concept, particularly people who are just embarking on teacher education for example. So could you just explain what a plenary is exactly, and why it's a good idea? Oli: Sure. Plenaries are the sort of final task I guess of your session and they are a way of reviewing the learning to gauge, I guess students' understanding of the session. So it’s that kind of final task that you put in to summarise or review the whole session. Martine: So in some respects it's a bit of formative assessment. It's a bit of recapping, it's a bit of summing up, all kind of amalgamated into one final activity. Oli: Sure. It's almost like the umbrella of the sessions going, what did I want them to know? Have they understood it? What have I missed, or what haven't they got? I think it's a really good way, especially for teachers to ... I think it's almost more effective as a practitioner to be able to go, did I do my job today? Was I good at what I did? Or did they completely miss the point? I think sometimes you can do a whole session and you can really be like, "Oh my god, this is brilliant, this is amazing." And then you get to the final bit and they like they really didn't understand what I was trying to get to. I guess in performing arts especially, sometimes we work perhaps in metaphors more, or concepts. We're sort of trying to ... We try and encourage people down a path, or down a journey, rather than saying here are a series of information that you must be able to remember by the end of this session. So sometimes what you think they've understood isn't actually what they've taken from your session. Martine: I quite like the idea of using a plenary for both assessment, as in checking for learning, but also using it as a bit of an evaluation as well, in terms of working out the quality of what occurred in that lesson, in terms of your performance, and how you made that learning happen and things. So I think the idea of it kind of traversing those two aspects of teaching and learning is a really important point. Oli: Yeah. And I think to me really, I think I'd almost personally put it that it's a reflection for me almost more than for the learners. I find looking at the sort of the effective of plenaries it's about saying, well have they got it? And if they haven't, then maybe you have to be a bit flexible and you go, okay, right next session I'm going to have to change my style to task. I'm going to do a review of my previous learning. Or maybe I'm going to have to do that whole session again in a completely different way, because they have fundamentally not got the key thing that I thought I was delivering perfectly. Again, like within performing arts as a context, our lesson plans and our schemes of work have to be really flexible. Because you never know what's going to come up. Or you may plan to say block 10 pages, but you might get stuck on the first page. That's a whole session just on one page of text. So you have to be able to flex and wiggle your schemes to fit. I think the plenary is a really good way of checking in and going, "Have I done what I needed to do today?" Yes or no, and then and then from that, that will affect the next day or the next session or whenever you see them again. I think self-reflection for staff is one of the most important parts of our development and also the biggest impact for students because you have to sort of not be the master of everything all the time and be prepared to be wrong. Martine: Your point about self-reflection being so important for teachers is absolutely bang on and actually it's really valuable for students too. So if we can model that to them through our practice, I mean that sends a really powerful message. I get what you're saying about the need for fluidity within your sessions and kind of being able to adapt your scheme of work, that makes a lot of sense. But I guess if you're using say a starter activity and a plenary, it really marks the beginning and the end of the session as well. So where there could be a complete lack of structure, it creates a little bit of structure as well. Is that a benefit you've noticed as well or is that just me making things up? Oli: Yeah, so I always choose a starter activity like when we play warm up drama warmup games, but I choose the games really specifically to show the skill that I need them to use that session. So it may look like an irrelevant game, but actually it's a really clear, well thought out plan. Although maybe not everybody would see it. So perhaps a game where they're learning a sequence or a pattern, but they have to use words and movement. Then we're going into blockings. It's like, okay, well you have to remember words and blocking and we warmed up your brain to remember muscle memory and spoken memory. So therefore it is a really underpinned theory to the silly game that we play at the start. But what I've always struggled with is how to then mirror that at the end. The plenaries then have always become ... It's a ticket to leave, or it's one of the kind of the standard education games or activities that would kind of suggest. But it's never felt necessarily vocationally appropriate. That's where I struggled, felt that I struggled with plenaries. But I also always, always, always run out of time. I get really overexcited and kind of like, we're like really focused on what's happening. And then suddenly, we sort of teach in two-hour blocks, that time has just disappeared. I barely look up at the clock. Yeah, so I've always run out of time on my sessions and then would upload to Google Drive, or Google Classroom, the plenary task. It would tend to then blur into maybe a bit of sort of homework in a way. Or like a development tasks, going, "Maybe look at this." Or, "Can you comment on this?" Or often it was a sort of a review and comment on the work. So watch this video clip and then tell me two things that you may improve for next session. Or set yourself a target. Or whatever it is that I need them to do. But again, it always sort of felt tokenistic and like I was trying to fulfil some kind of educational model that I must put in, otherwise I'm not an effective teacher. Whereas it didn't feel like it was necessarily doing the job that a plenary should, of kind of really being in that moment of assessing, or reviewing the learning of the session. Also to give me an understanding. I didn't feel like I was grabbing all of the best bits of the plenary. Martine: With that in mind, you researched this as part of your college's or our college's professional development scheme, and there was an observation and things like that. What did you find out? What did you learn? Where are you now with plenaries? Oli: So I think the main thing I learned, or the main thing I took from it was that I was doing really good plenaries, but I just wasn't calling it a plenary. That plenaries aren't necessarily some dark arts of education. That they are something that we naturally do, and we probably instinctively know how to do it. We don't necessarily have to carve out this additional task. Because if you are teaching, especially in a scaffolding approach, you're naturally taking away that support. Then by the end the students tend to have something that is a bit freer where they get to demonstrate their learning. That actually is your plenary. So we always, if I'm say directing a show, and I'm working on a scene, I'll go through the blocking, we'll talk about character choices. We'll look at moments that could be developed or ideas or thoughts. They try things out in three or four different ways. And I'd give them feedback and it's a very reciprocal process. Then at the end of that moment, we would then put it all together and run it. Then I'd put a plenary task on the end to do something else. And it's like, well actually that run, that is the plenary task, because they they're showing me what they've learned, what they've remembered, and they're also demonstrating what I need to do next to help them improve. Martine: That's such a great takeaway. So what you're saying is you actually were doing plenaries already. They were serving their purpose. They were part of your teaching and learning plan from the beginning. It was almost a case of putting a label on it. That's so interesting and a great reflection on your part, definitely. Oli: It's definitely the thing of like, you know, we have, or I tend to favor the sort of the five minute lesson plan sort of structure. It visually works for me a bit better to have a bit more of a kind of a creative page in front of me when I'm thinking about planning my lesson. But you tend to have like certain amount of boxes for your tasks. Say there are five boxes and you're like, "Right, I must split my class into five. I'm going to do my starter task, and then I'm going to do my kind of introduction, and then I'm going to do an activity. Then I'm going to do activity two. Then I'm going to do my plenary." I don't know, I kind of sometimes go, sometimes my lesson is one task, but it's just a really big task that naturally flows from something that gets you into it, doing the activity and reviewing it. For me, it's learning how to break that down into boxes, I guess, to be able to compartmentalise each section. I could theorise my practice loads and have so many tasks and reflection points and feedback points and peer reviews, and all these things that happen naturally. Or I could get on with my job. So that's, I think, the biggest takeaway I've had is going, if I need to now articulate in a really detailed way, my lesson structure, it's all there. But ultimately I also feel much more confident in going, I've done a plenary because we have reviewed the learning of this session, and I've seen what the students have taken away from it. What they've been able to apply straight away, and sort of looking at the development metacognition, and their ownership of the learning. Most of my plenary tasks are much more meaningful because the students own it, rather than sort of arbitrarily filling in a form or a, I don't know, you know, sticking a post it on a wall. They've actually just gone, "No, I've done it. I've got it." Or, "I haven't got that bit, I need to work on that." Martine: There's so much good stuff in there. I mean, when is it ever a good thing that we do something in order to tick a box? That really sounds like what we were doing, you know, I don't know, 24 months ago in terms of the old approach to lesson observations. Where it was performance management and you had to ... You know how lesson observations used to be, there was a formula to get an outstanding lesson observation. You have a starter activity, you have a plenary, you make sure there's plenty of assessment for learning, you don't do a lot of teacher talk, etc, etc. When is that ever good? Oli Yeah, no, I think that's the thing. It definitely feels like, and I guess this ... Maybe it's an old school approach to kind of the fear of Ofsted, where you have to go through all these things, and there's a certain formula to do a perfect lesson. But I think also there's that thing of going, the perfect lesson is the lesson that needs to be taught. This is what they need right now, and this is how I need to do it. Of course you can be developed, and somebody can give you pointers and guidance on ideas, of how you could improve. But really I think especially in sort of creative subjects, where you just go, this is just what needs to happen right now. I remember I was being observed, I had my formal lesson observation, and we were lighting the show. It just had to happen, it was the only day I could get into the theatre. The only day I could have the technicians. And that was the time that I was given for my observation. My lesson plan was like literally one thing of going, I will sit with a technician and we will light the whole show from beginning to end, and the students will stand on stage and move when I tell them to. It was very old school chalk and talk, because they had to be pretty much silent. Do not say anything, until I ask you something, and do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you. Because that's the nature of vocation, what plotting the lighting run is. The observer was ... I just sat there sort of apologising in advance, going, "I'm really sorry, be as honest as you want to be honest, but this is ..." I kind of explained the situation. I got really brilliant feedback and he really highlighted how independent the learners were. How they had ownership of all of their work. They knew exactly what was doing. We were working completely vocationally. We were working in symmetry. The students knew what I wanted them to do. They were able to adapt, they were resilient, they were resourceful. It was like, "Oh yeah, all that stuff is there and it does demonstrate teaching and it definitely demonstrates learning." But because working in the vocation environment, sometimes you feel like maybe you're not doing the perfect teacher job. And you feel that you should, you know, put more bells and whistles on it. Like there was no maths, I didn't ask them to count to eight whilst walking in time to the music. Martine: And you didn't use an iPad. There was no iPad use. Oli: There was no iPad use, there was just a lot of me shouting. That was pretty much it. But that again, that I professionally know and there's a point where, as a performer, you become a self-moving piece of furniture. It's “I don't need your opinion. I don't need you to tell me what the problem is. I need you to stand there so I can make sure the lights are on you, and that the technician can do their job. Right now your ego is not needed, thank you very much.” Martine: If your learners don't learn that, then they are not going to be good actors who get hired, ultimately. Oli: That's a really important thing. I mean we very much teach the importance of respecting your technicians. That's a big part of the industry, is, you know, sound and light are people who get given very little time to do their job. But ultimately they can mess you up on stage because if you annoy your lighting technician, they will turn your lights off before you finish speaking. Or they will not turn it on quick enough. There's lots of many ways that other people can mess you up whilst you're the one in front of the audience. So you have to really, I teach a lot of like, as an actor you are only one part of this production. It just happens to be that you're the one that gets all the glory. But really understanding the whole process is a valuable thing for our learning. But also just being able to be ... For somebody, an observer to come in and reflect back to you, that actually I've worked for 12 weeks on this production. I teach company as my core thing. That we're teamwork, I guess, and kind of more educational speak. But that they are there as a company of actors. They are there to work together and they are there as a collective, and that their individual ego isn't being serviced. We get a lot of stars, or wannabe stars, and it's very difficult sometimes to put them in a box and go, "You're part of a bigger thing now, this isn't about you, this is about everybody." But that learning was then reflected back as a sort of almost towards the end of the process. It's like a summative way of showing that their professionalism is demonstrated more in that moment than it necessarily is when they're performing, because the professional attitude is just to be able to go, okay, this is what needs to happen and I need to do that now. Martine: Going back to the observation process where you were doing this tech rehearsal and actually your observer was able to kind of highlight so many aspects of good practice there. I also think we need to give a nod to the experience of that observer, because clearly they weren't coming into your lesson with that kind of tick box approach. Where they wanted to see this, this, this, this, this and this. They obviously had a lot of experience and recognised good teaching and learning when they saw it. Oli: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I feel at our college we are very lucky to have a very ... I guess because we're a vocational college, we have a really diverse teaching staff, who come from many different walks of life. Not many of them are educationalists, first and foremost, they come from industry and they come with lots of different perspectives. It's really nice, I think, at college when you get to go to areas that are completely different to what you would teach in. So you have zero opinion on kind of the content of the teaching. I have no idea whether or not that's how you effectively weld something together. But all I'm looking at is the delivery, the structure, the support, the information and the kind of environment. So I'm not going to go, "Well if it was me, I would ..." I was going to try and talk about welding then, you know, "I would do it slightly differently. I would hold it at this angle." I don't know that, I haven't got that specialist information. But I can stay that instruction was really clear, that was a really supported ... I can see there was development, you know, those are the things. And so my observer was somebody who does have, I think quite often observed the performing arts area, and always really says ... Has said that they always enjoy sort of coming in and seeing a world that is completely far away from what they exist in normally. Actually that kind of that distance helps you to remove your own opinion or preconceived idea, and you just observe what's going on. Martine: Absolutely, and I have to say, that is probably the best part of my job, because as a teacher trainer and assessor trainer, I get to see the most incredible teaching and learning happen. Not so long ago I was working with the local police force, and I was watching a firearms trainer assess other police officers shooting. It was such a privilege to be able to be in someone else's environment, and be allowed in. I think as teachers we can learn so much from watching other teachers in different environments. Ultimately, it is just teaching and learning. To make the connection with plenaries, it's much more of a concept than a specific set of games or tools or activities. It's about embracing the concept and making it work for your environment really, isn't it? Oli: I think so, and I think, you know, you can go online and you can find a hundred effective plenary tasks, or the best plenary activities there are, or buy this and we'll give you loads of plenaries. But really it's working out what is the most effective for you as an individual, but also for the session that you're teaching. A ticket to leave, I keep using that one because it the one I remember the most from teacher training was like okay that's a good one to use, because it's sort of tangible. But that's not always going to be the most effective thing to use. I always worry about students feeling a sense of, "Oh okay, why am I doing this?" If it feels irrelevant then, they're not going to get anything from it, and they're just going to write down anything. I also think plenaries have always felt to me like they're the last five minutes of a session. The last five minutes of the sessions are, you know, that as are people leaving, you know, really to me the other thing I took away is I tend to do my plenary, the activity really is, is probably three quarters of the way through the session. It's almost like you need a plenary and then an end task, like a fun thing to finish, or a don't forget. Or you know, parish notices, by the way, next week can you bring this in? Whereas it all tended to get very muddled on top of each other. Fill this in, do this, don't forget to do that. Somebody uploaded this, go for that. Can you make sure you stack the chairs away. Okay, bye. And it's like, what just happened? Nothing happened. Nothing was effective, nothing was learned, or no space was given to the reflective nature, I guess, of the plenary. For the students to be able to go, okay, what have I taken away? What do I need? What did I get? Have I got a question? Like now is the time to ask the question. It's like going, I don't want you to sort of next week come back in and go, "Oh yeah, I forgot to ask at the end of last session, what was this?" It's like, no, ask me at that time. Ask me at that moment, so that we can nail it, or we can make a plan. Martine: That's such a good point. That's such a good point about not having to have your plenary right at the very end. You know, why are you doing a plenary right at the very end? Because the books say you should. That's a really important takeaway that you've got to make it work for your learners and your topic. Oli: I think also when I started teaching, or started my teacher training, I realized that I try and fit in a lot into my sessions. Or I want them to really kind of grasp loads of things from every single session, and it's like 20 different takeaways. Actually kind of go, okay, well, no I need to dilute that down. I need to be ... This session I'm really just going to focus on these two or three things. Then your plenary is going, did they get those two or three things? Are they ready for more? That sense of being able to sort of take a litmus test. Go, "Okay, cool. Where were we up to? Okay, we're up to here. Yeah, I can give these people more." Or that person's flying, I'm going to ask them to really work on these two or three things. That person has got no idea what day of the week it is, I need to pull this right back. Being able to gauge where each individual learner is up to means that your plenaries have to be purposeful, and not just like say, "Oh, the books tell me I must, in the last five minutes, do something. Quick, here's a post it note and a felt tip, draw your emotion. Slap it on." Martine: Could you offer some advice or maybe any kind of resources to the listeners who are wanting to maybe investigate plenaries further, do a little bit of research, see how they could focus on that element of their practice? Oli: So the best sort of resource that I found that really sort of helped me develop is the How to Teach range by Phil Beadle, I think his name is. There is a book called The Book of Plenary. That's a really good resource for understanding sort of the purpose of plenaries, I guess. Then there are loads of like ... The Teacher Toolkit is a really good place to sort of start. They've got links to the resource plenary resources. My advice really is take the structure of any of the activities, and work out how to adapt it to your session. Even if it's like for giving it a theme or kind of redesigning it slightly. I also think sometimes when as teachers you kind of go, I want to find the resource that I can just download, and just do, and then that's just done. It's the path of least resistance. I think sometimes just taking five minutes to go, okay, well how could I just slightly re-imagine that, or make it work for what I'm teaching, would be really effective. So if you're on a topic, again, I'll go back to ticket to leave, which is just saying to somebody, "Write down two things that you've learned from this session, or two things that you're going to do. Or a task, something you must remember for next week." Or whatever. Can you fit that into your theme or your topic? How do you adapt things? Really, to me, I think, you know, primary school teachers to me are the absolute pinnacle of teaching pedagogy, really. Because they do this all the time. Constantly just adapt and mix up what they normally do to fit their topic, to fit their theme. Whether it's dinosaurs or Egypt, or whatever other topics there are. They adapt their resources, and they just spend that time ... A friend of mine, we used to meet up in the evenings, and she used to arrive with pages and pages of laminated stuff that you'd be sitting chatting, and she's still cutting out her laminated things for the next day, because she's like, "I just need these resources, and I've got no time to make them." And primary school teachers to me seem to have, they just have that gift of going, "Here's an idea, and here's how I'm going to change it to fit what I'm doing." They probably use the same resource every term, or every topic, but they just twist it, and then they adapt it. That's something I think teaching older students, you get a bit lazy about. We go, well that's just that, you have it, and there's nothing you can do with it. So my advice is definitely looking at making it meaningful. If your students needed to have learnt a series of 10 things, then the plenary needs to be, do you know these 10 things. Not don't deal in metaphors, and if a metaphor is not right, tell me, do you know this? If they need to be tested, test them, but maybe try and find a, I don't know, a fun way of testing them. You know, a physical Bingo, where everyone stands up, sits down, when you say a word, what's the definition? Loads of game shows have structures that work for education. Jeopardy is a great one where they give you the definition, you have to say what is the dah, dah, dah. But yeah, if you need to test them, test them, but be explicit about it. If it's a gauging of where they're up to, then that can be a really diverse and fun way of doing it. Martine: Oli that's great advice. Thank you so much. Any resources you've mentioned I will make sure I pop a link in the show notes to them, so people can access them easily. Before we wrap things up, I have one final question for you, and that is where can people find you online? Oli: So I'm on Twitter as myself as OliGsy. That's where I tend to sort of interact the most with education stuff, information. But I'm also, I am the artistic director of a theatre company called TinWhistleProductions.com, where we run corporate training using improvisation and drama techniques. Martine: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. It's been a real pleasure and I hope you'll come back again soon.

In this episode I am breaking down exactly why both quantity of sleep and quality of sleep matter (including the science). Then I'm high-lighting 5 ways in which we sabotage our sleep and outlining a plan of action that you can use to holistically better your sleep. Learn more at www.wildsparrowwellness.com **Disclaimer: do not start a new supplement routine without speaking with your doctor and pharmacist.

ACEC welcomes political consultant Mark Bryant of Agency Advisors onto the show to discuss the changing nature of issue advocacy in the age of big data and the internet.  Mark discusses three main themes during the interview: message packaging, message delivery and measurement and how each can be utilized to maximize the return of an issue advocacy campaign.  During the interview Mark and Engineering Influence host Jeff Urbanchuk discuss tactics and tools that can help advocates better tailor their messages during the development of an integrated issue campaign.  Some of those resources are listed below:Useful Reference Information:Optimal Social Media Image and Video Sizes Social Media Video Tips and StrategiesData Visulaization Tools:TableauSocial Analytics Tools:Sprout Social HootsuiteInfographic Creation Tools:Adobe SparkCanva Transcript:Host:                            Welcome to another edition of ACEC's podcast, Engineering Influence. Today we're pleased to welcome Mark Bryant to the show. Mark is a wealth of information when it comes to the world of advocacy, message development and message delivery. We wanted Mark to stop by at the show because the world of advocacy is changing the same tactics and tools, the big name brands use to target consumers with advertising can be used in advocacy to create well-designed, executed and measured communications campaigns, technology, especially the internet. And the rise of social media changed the way we communicate and it's continuing to change by the day. And we'd like to give our members an overview of current trends and communicating and what you should think about when it comes to crafting an issue, advocacy campaigns. So Mark, welcome. And if you could start by telling us not only what you do with agency advisors, but what do you do for clients?Mark Bryant:                Jeff, thank you so much for having me today. So, so we at agency advisers, we like to say we bring we bring new tech to candidates. Causes in the agencies that work on their behalf. And by way of a new tech, we mean sort of data, digital and analytics capabilities that are, that are, that are coming into the market to help public affairs advocacy practitioners, advance legislative and regulatory agendas. We work with trade associations like the ACEC in a consultative capacity. We're in, we often open with a presentation on trends and innovation in, in advocacy. We tend to focus sort of along a continuum. We start with ways in which people are packaging messaging more effectively these days ways in which people are delivering those messages more efficiently, often times clearly to decision makers and those who influence them.Mark Bryant:                And then we end with ways in which those messages are being measured or the degree to which methods to measure the degree to which are your message is getting through. So our job is to essentially be a resource to practitioners that want to leverage. This is a, this is an extraordinarily sort of complex ecosystem, right? The number of providers in the sort of data digital and analytics sort of ecosystem category is, is changing quickly and, and, and is just almost on an on manageable.Host:                            The minute you think you have a handle on it, everything changes.Mark Bryant:                Absolutely. And, you know, they come, they go but there are, there are certain things that really catch our attention as particularly compelling and impactful.Host:                            So trends, I mean everybody loves trends focusing on trends. And I understand you have really three big trends that you want to kind of talk to us about today.Mark Bryant:                Sure, absolutely. So, within the context of, of those, those three sort of big areas of focus again, packaging, messaging, delivering messaging and, and measuring the efficacy of messaging. The first is around helping how people are packaging messaging most effectively today. And, and and a lot of people talk about this, not many people leverage it to the extent possible. And that is video, right? There's no better method of conveying a very sort of complex issue position to a lawmaker to, to a constituent of a lawmaker to virtually anyone that then by way of a, by way of a video, by basically telling your story in a format that's easily, readily sort of digestible and compelling. Right. we, we think that we love video not just because of its efficacy but, but also because of its utility.Mark Bryant:                So, so here there are couple of ways in which people are leveraging video that, that, that, that not, not everyone thinks about one today. In-Person engagement. So meetings with law makers and staffers often begin with a video. So the, literally the lobbyist, the government affairs, the government relations professional walking in to a lawmaker's office with a staffer, with a staff and a legislator, and they'll start with a video. They'll, they'll bring their tablets and bring their laptops. We'll start with a two, three, four minute video, which explains the organization's issue position in a clearly, you know, well thought out, methodical manner. There are oftentimes what are considered motion graphics or animated videos which really speak to the impact of a policy outcome on our lawmakers state or district. And so that, that starts a conversation, right? That's sort of sets the table, sets the stage and that yields a very sort of interactive that that leads to a very sort of dynamic and interactive conversation based on you know, a set of facts that were laid out and you know, in, in that, in that video format.Mark Bryant:                What's nice about that is you leave that office, that video stays behind you. You're government affairs, law lobbyists and government affairs professional, your lobbyist, they, walk away and that video stays and those lawmakers and staffers can share that video with other staffers, with committee members of subcommittee members, right? There's, there's great utility there. What can also be done, what's extraordinarily impactful is to sort of repackage or reformat that two, three, four minute video into a six second, a 15 second, a 3 second format, which can be leveraged in an ad campaign, right. To keep your issue top of mind among those lawmakers and staffers long after you leave. And that same, those same formats because people and the reasons six second 15, second 30 second are commonly used is because they can th th th they're, they're they're well-suited for different mediums.Mark Bryant:                So you want to be in front of that staffer when he or she wakes up when he or she is, you know, en route to the office. Potentially. It depends upon their, you know, their mode of transportation throughout the course of the day, you know, when they get home through connected TV, when they wrap up their day with a little social media, you know, scanning, if you will. So, so it's, it's fascinating. You can, you can package that message to stay top of mind among those, those lawmakers and staffers. Again long after, long after you leave, you can also leverage those same videos to engage like-minded groups, to make others aware of the issue position, sort of pull them in to the discourse or the dialogue or, or to to, to extend your message beyond just as lawmakers and staffers. And then finally you can use those same messages to inform the constituents of the law makers that are important to you.Mark Bryant:                And you might reformat further to end that with a call to action. Right? So you might, you might educate again, constituents within a state or the district of the lawmaker that matters and ask them to make a phone call, ask them to send an email, ask them to, to, to post something on social media that's relevant to that issue position.Host:                            Yeah. And that's, that's all good points because I think something that really get across is the idea that one piece of you can't really look at a piece of content as a piece of content and, and as a singular thing, like, okay, check the box. We did a video. You have to look at, we have a video, so how else can we break this down and reuse it and repackage it because there are so many different mediums right now to send out.Mark Bryant:                That's right. That's right.Host:                            You could host the video of course first on YouTube and that gives you pretty much a, a wide audience that you can draw from it and it's easily accessible. But then you need to repackage that for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and they all have different requirements. That's right. And it's something that I'll make sure to put into the show notes for this episode. Some guidelines about different platforms and their requirements, but it's something to keep in mind about when you're producing content, like a video that focuses on your message that you do in such a way where you're thinking ahead those steps so that when you're developing the message, you're make making the two minute video with a mind to saying how can I now cut that back down? How can I take that two minute video and make it a 30 second, a 15 second...Mark Bryant:                And not only for, for, for different mediums if you will, at different formats for different mediums, but for different audiences, right? Because your audience, your YouTube audience may be quite different than your Snapchat audience. Right? And so you want to think about right, how many sort of permutations, right, of that message you need for the with the, with the audience targeting in mind, right? If it's lawmakers and staff you know, that's, that's one, one consideration if it's constituents or, or very specific segments of the population within a lawmakers, state or district. That's a whole different set of considerations.Host:                            Absolutely. And I think that, you know, even the first, you know, when you brought up video, I think a lot of people are still keyed on that traditional, okay, I'm coming in, I've got my folder, my folder has my talking points, my folder has a brochure or a written piece of material, which I'm going to present to the lawmaker or, or that lawmakers staff.Host:                            And they're saying, okay, video, why would I want to use video instead of written material, which I know is on paper. And I'm going to hand it to them and, and you know, that's, you know, I can email to them. So what's the benefit of video over a written piece of material for the person consuming that information?Mark Bryant:                So I think one, it's additive, right? I don't, I don't think video necessarily replaces the more traditional, you know means or methods of communicating. Clearly the, the video is meant to, to to, to generate the diet, to set the stage to as somewhat of a springboard into the dialogue. Yeah. Right. That, that you'd like to have occur, right. In the context of that meaning it, and I think it's highly complimentary or additive, right? So you want to, I think in many cases our observation our experience has been the, those, those, other materials are still part of the sort of protocol, if you will.Mark Bryant:                Video is quite additive and you're, you're, you're well aware of the statistics. Yeah. I would imagine that studies have shown that people remember 10% of what they hear. Yeah. 20% of, of what they read and 80% of what they see.Host:                            We're very visual creatures.Mark Bryant:                Very, very good. Absolutely. So if you can all the rubber and bring the, you know, the full arsenal, tip it to bear. Right, right. So there's sort of the different elements, components each meaning there are different dynamics. Right. So, so, so to have a video as a, as a starting point is, is we're, we're finding to be again, extremely impactful.Host:                            Yeah, exactly. Then that's why, you know, a lot of people are now recording their podcasts and video. Because they want to have both, they want to have the audio, but they also want to have the video, two different audiences, two different ways of consuming the media. Yes. Same kind of content. Yes. But you're thinking and treating it differently because you know that you'll want to have a diversity of, of audiences reaching your material because your audience in the car is completely different than the person sitting at home who has found YouTube flipping through things and find something that they want to watch. So that, that's really important. That's a, that's an important trend. And that's really on, on a question of packaging your message, which is something that you really need to take a real thought, full approach for towards, before you actually start down the road of, of, you know, considering what's going to be in your you know, your, your campaign. The other trend that you mentioned is more focused on delivering that message. Right? And getting that message to the right people. So what are given the fact that we have so many different mediums that we can choose from? Sure. You know, what's, what are some of the trends related to actually messaged delivery?Mark Bryant:                Yeah, it's fascinating. So how do you get that message once you packaged it? Right. And you have to define the sort of the, the, the, the right, you're determined the right message for the right audience, right? And the right format. How do you get those messages in front of people in a very efficient, in front of decision makers and those who influence them and in a very efficient manner. So we find most fascinating is what's characterized as social graphing, right? So clearly I can get to you Senator I, I can, I can get my message to you and your staffers by way of, and you're probably very familiar with geo-fencing as an example. So, so I can by way of a technology which allows me to draw, you know, a circle or a polygon around a location. I can serve my message, right?Mark Bryant:                But by way of video as an example to mobile devices within that location, right. And geo-fencing, there are, it's while it sounds very straight forward, the notion of, okay, I want to deliver my message to everyone in Senator Warner's office, right? There are some nuances or complexities which, which people now are beginning to understand that they need to do I wanna hit people that had been in Senator Warner's office with great frequency over the course of the last year? Do I want to reach people that were in Senator Warner's office as it related to a specific fly-in, right? Who do I want to do it? Do I want to eliminate the infrequent visitors? How far back do I want to look? I can look back a year and I can determine, okay, who are the most frequent visitors in, in Senator Warner's office over the course of the last year?Mark Bryant:                And I can get my message to those people, whether they're in the office or not. So, so geo-fencing is, is, is become embraced by the association community as a, as a means by which they can get their message in front of lawmakers and staffers efficiently and cost effectively and cost effectively. Right? And you don't, ah, fascinating. So not only do you have look back windows and the ability to, to make some decisions around which segment of the audience you want to reach, you have the ability to reach folks that may be in the district offices. So this is a, so that look back window is it relates to the Capitol office. You can also reach people back in district offices. You can you can reach people again, as I mentioned outside of the office. So there are even very sophisticated methods of geo-fencing homes in an anonymized fashion, right?Speaker 3:                    So you want to get to that. I want to ensure that I get to that staffer. So they're consuming content and they're at home and it's in the evening and, and, and, and and they're exposed to that. Does that message, this is all that, all that data, the minute you carry your phone with you, this is all the stuff is being collected in and now people are starting to filter through it and realize you can, Ew, that's there. You can go back. You can target people very, very specifically. I mean, that's the point where you can trigger someone in a room. Well, and that, and that. And that brings up that I think, one of the more exciting sort of trends. And that's around social graphing. Okay. And so the ability to reach everyone or, or a number of quite a few folks within Senator Warner's personal network, right?Speaker 3:                    So if you think about who does Senator Warner interact with sort of day in, day out, right? That can include friends, family members, business associates people with whom Senator Warner may work on within philanthropic organizations. Social media connections, clearly staff, donors. So there, there are capabilities now, there are companies that will define those social graphs that'll map. Yeah. Jeff's that work. Yeah. Right. and serve largely by way of social media content to those individuals. And it's even so, sort of a fascinating aspect of this is even before they serve the message, which may actually feature Senator Warner in the, in the creative and say, please, please tell Senator Warner to support the following. Our issue position they will secure if you will, quite a bit of engagement on that content before they put it in front of the people within the network of Senator Warner.Speaker 3:                    So those people within Senator Warner's network, we'll take note of that content because there's been so much engagement they perceive, right? I mean, and it's real in this case, perception is reality. That in fact this is an important issue. This is something to take note off because there's so much engagement, engagement being, you know, people have liked the, the, the content they've shared, the content they've commented on the content, right? There's, there's so much engagement around the content, they should pay attention to that content and they might then be more apt to engage Senator Warner on that particular issue.Host:                            So it's like the old, you know, battlefield idea of, you know, you, you're first, you prepare the ground and then you send your Calvary yet, right. You get, you make the most favorable environment through targeted messages that create the perception that's what this is is an issue of, of concern. And then you get them with the call to action.Mark Bryant:                That's exactly right. It's fascinating. You're absolutely right. Sequencing is another thing that people are, are being far more deliberate about. What message do we get to whom in what order in order to make the greatest impact. Right? And so I, I think about just a, to add to your analogy, I think about the air cover before the ground floor, right? So, so, so back to fly ins, you know, people are geo-fencing, right? Before, so they're getting their message into the lawmakers office before they show up and then after they leave. So, so that issue that organization remains top of mind is it becomes a social graphing sort of very similar sort of sort of mindset around, again, let's go get lots of engagement on this content and then in a sequential fashion, put it in front of the people that are going to be in front of Senator Warner. And you imagine you take these techniquesHost:                            And you tie them in with traditional techniques that are the tried and true. Yes. So for example, if our flying that we did last may, you know, we didn't do the extent of geo-fencing or or or sequencing, but you know, you get an ad on radio, you get it out there, you start getting stuff into newspapers, editorials, you get your members who are doing fly-ins to do their local letters to the editor. So it kind of creates that presumption that something's happening. Then when they're there, or close to it. You hit them with digital advertising, which was targeted to those audiences that you want to hit. And then again, the follow through. Once it's done, you hit them again with another series of messages that pretty much it's the whole idea of, you know, tell them what you're going to say. Tell them and then tell them again. Yeah, that's right. And then make sure they have that lasting impact. You tie that in with traditional advertising, traditional, you know, direct earned media engagement, and then this more sort of the multiplier effect. And you can really make a Mark and that's solely from, you know, taking it from the perspective of a former Hill staffer. You can tell when an organization has it stuff together. When they do a fly in, either they come in and they just do their events and they have their meetings. But the groups that have that first, second, third touch are the ones that people take note. They stand out, they stand out. Yeah. So the big question on, of course, you know, that's the impact. Now I know you have a massive impact on the audiences that you're trying to persuade. But for an organization like ACAC, you know, you take all these steps, you prepare the message, you package it, you get deliver it. The big question is measurement, right? Which is the final trend I think that this is the most important thing because vertical the old days, you know, and even now with some of the baseline analytics that you get from the platforms that you're not paying for unless you're using like a sprout social or, or, or a Meltwater or something that's a paid program, the analytics that you get back are fairly broad. That's right. X amount of engagements.Host:                            Just like the idea of saying, okay, I'm going to buy an ad on radio in this DMA. This is how many people were probably going to be hearing this based off of this is our audience at that time. But you don't really know dollar equivalency saying that this article is the same as let's say, $10,000 worth of ad buy. That doesn't really matter anymore. What are the trends in measuring the effectiveness of these messages and these techniques? What's the big trend driving analytics?Mark Bryant:                Sure. This is, so there are a number of of methods of measuring impact and, and potential efficacy. Pre-Campaign there are methods of measuring efficacy during the campaign. Yeah. There are measure methods of measuring efficacy. Post-Campaign the ultimate measure is did you win or lose? Well, yes, clearly, but, but however, you know, there are the reality is you need to report internally as to how well you're doing along the way internally and oftentimes externally, right? We find social and traditional media monitoring and impact analyses to be by far the most telling method of whether your message is actually getting through. Okay. Okay. So what does that mean? You mentioned a number of tools. Organizations have tools. Those tools are built to provide you intelligence as to what's being mentioned, who's mentioning those things. The, the how frequently those mentions are, are, are, are occurring. What, what's missing is telling sentiment analysis and recommendations as to what to do next. So some organizations have the internal expertise but it's it's challenging to sort of maintain that, invest heavily in that and maintain that over time.Mark Bryant:                So what you find is organizations are often turning to third parties or making a real commitment to investing in internal resources to interpret the data, right? And now we're finding people using multiple platforms, social and traditional. It's important to mention, it's not just social media monitoring, the social and traditional media monitoring and impact analysis. So, human beings that are interpreting the data that the machines, you know, no matter how sophisticated, right? And in terms of leveraging machine learning natural language processing, everybody likes to call this AI. Yeah. Right? No matter how smart the tool, you still need the interpretation, right? So, so, so Linda here at the ACEC, Jeff, others, Steve, others they're gonna want to understand, well, what is, what does this mean? Right? Well, what are these mentions mean?Mark Bryant:                And more importantly, what do we do next? Right? So organizations are leveraging social and traditional media monitoring in order to establish baselines or benchmarks. So before you then begin a campaign, whether paid or and or earned, right? What are people saying relative to your issue, right? What are they saying that's positive? What are they saying? This negative and who's saying it? Right? Establish that baseline, then launch your campaign made and, or earn, monitor, measure day in, day out. The degree to which their vernacular or the discourse is changing. Are people adopting your messaging? Right? And if they are, are they the right people? Right? Yeah. That's the big thing. The amazing thing. And there are instances where people push a certain messaging if you will. And there are unintended consequences. Something that the industry may have thought would be perceived very positively, was in fact perceived negatively.Mark Bryant:                And that further informs messaging and strategies. So you begin by establishing a baseline, which informs your messaging and strategy, right? In the reverse order, your strategy and messaging, right? One in the same, in many case are very closely intertwined. Clearly. then you get in market with your messaging in market being, you know, getting the right message in front of the right people at the right time in order to drive policy outcomes. Right. And then your real time, again measuring the degree to which that's being received and interpreted. Exactly right. And so again, to what degree did the vernacular or the discourse change and that further informs messaging because what you do is you invest more heavily in the messages that seem to be resonating and you might eliminate messages that really fell flat. Right. And then at the, at the end of the campaign, you know, even post-campaign the legislation passed you know, to what degree, what kind of feedback or did you get some sort of post-campaign that you might leverage? So sort of in other initiatives. Yeah,Host:                            And that's a really interesting point because I remember back on my my time at the PR firm I was with and also on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee undertaking a large issue campaign or, or, or legislative initiative and building a campaign about that. It was constant measurement and it was the good old media content analysis. It was before, during and after. It was and is a lot of leg work and this is why you need to invest because it's looking at, okay, I'm going to take a look at all the media that we're getting. I'm going to assign that a score. I'm going to sign that a positive, negative, neutral score. Then I'm going to take that, I'm going to count that up and, and then I'm going to start doing some analysis of that data. How much has their share of voice in the conversation? What's our share of positive, negative, neutral? Who's writing about it, who isn't writing about it, do a gap analysis, who, where are the targets that we need to reach?Mark Bryant:                Precisely. All those things in traditional media can now be tied in with analytics and a lot of platforms, like you said, are using machine learning AI to do these more qualitative now that's right. Assessments of of message effectiveness and it's, it's a really important thing. These are all things that you need to take into consideration when you're looking at doing a strategic plan. We just broach the surface, which is why we're going to have Mark back on because we want to use some case studies, especially as we get into the presidential cycle and things start heating up and talk about these individual trends in a little bit more depth. Absolutely. I also want to make sure that I put some, some information in the show notes for everybody who's listening to take a look at some data because there's a lot here to take advantage of and also to think about.Host:          So I really appreciate the time that you've taken because we've covered a lot of stuff. This is, I love this topic. I could go on forever on this. But let's, let's hold off. Let's keep a little bit for the next time, right. We'll go into the specifics. But Mark Bryan of of it's, I'll tell you, it's, that is the changing world is something else and things are just insane and, and just are getting, are getting crazier by the day. When it comes to to getting your message across, but really appreciate you coming on the show. Well, I can't thank you enough again for having me and look forward to the next time, Jeff. Thanks 

Hi everyone, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the We Make Books Podcast - A podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between! Week Three of Submissions September and oh boy did we really run with it this time!  This week we are bringing you not one, not two, but three episodes and they’re all about those mysterious creatures known Literary Agents.  Who are they?  What do they do?  How do you summon one?  For this episode, we sat down with Literary Agent Caitlin McDonald to discuss all this and more.  We loved talking with Caitlin and hope that our discussion might remove a bit of the fear and mystery from proccess of querying agents.  Caitlin is with the Donald Maass Literary Agency and you can (and should!) check her out her and her work at: Website: http://maassagency.com/caitlin-mcdonald/ Twitter: @literallycait - https://twitter.com/literallycait/status/1154917792619139073 Tumbler: https://literallycait.tumblr.com/   And be sure to check out new and upcoming releases from some of her clients!   The Resurrectionist of Caligo: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KDWLM3P The Library of the Unwritten: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608277/the-library-of-the-unwritten-by-a-j-hackwith/9781984806376/ In case you’re just joining us, this month is Submissions September on the We Make Books Podcast!  We’re doing seven (7!) episodes this month all about the process of submitting your novel.  We have a lot of awesome discussions lined up and even some special guests.  Here’s what will be coming your way for the month: Week 1 (9/3/2019): Is This Ready For Other People to See?- Submitting Your Manuscript Week 2 (9/10/2019): My Entire Novel in Three Hundred Words - The Dreaded Query Letter Week 3 (9/17/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 1: An Interview with Literary Agent Caitlin McDonald               (9/18/2019): Agents of Literature, Part 2: Interviews with Agented Authors               (9/19/2019): Agents of Literature Part 3: Interviews with Agented Authors Week 4 (9/24/2019):What is Going On Over There? - The Other Side of the Submissions Process Week 5 (9/30/2019): Now I’m Even More Confused – Submissions September Q&A Episode We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writer and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Hit us up on our social media, linked below, and send us your questions, comments, concerns, and any stress relief suggestions for Kaelyn while she deals with the Giants’ will-they-won’t-they Eli Manning and Daniel Jones situation. Seriously guys, she can’t do a whole season of this. We hope you enjoy We Make Books!   Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast     Kaelyn (K): Hey everyone, welcome, another episode of the We Make Books podcast, a show about writing, publishing, and everything in between. I'm Kaelyn Considine, I'm the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. Rekka (R): And I'm Rekka and I write Science Fiction and Fantasy as R J Theodore. K: So Week Three, Submissions September. And this week's a doozy. R: We've got a lot of episodes for you this week. K: Yeah, so, what we ended up doing instead of just one episode about agents, we.. you're actually getting three this week. The first one is going to be an interview with an actual literary agent. Caitlin McDonald took some time to talk to us, she was lovely, we had such a great conversation and that's what you're going to be listening to today. Then, we have two more episodes that we're going to be putting out Wednesday and Thursday. R: Yeah, we're just going back to back with this. K: And we talked to six different authors about their process getting an agent... R: They're experience working with them. K: Yeah, cause I think there's... what we're learning, talking to people, there's a lot of mystery around this. R: Yeah. Mmm-hmm. K: Everyone is very uncertain about what agents do, and how you get one. R: And how you're allowed to use them. K: Yes. Yeah, so we had a really great time talking to Caitlin who gave us some really interesting insight and... Yeah, Week Three: Agents. We… Three episodes, because it turns out there's a lot to say about that. R: You know, this is a big part of it for a lot of people. K: Yeah, it's the check mark. It's a huge check mark for a lot of people in this process is: “Get agent." So take a listen, we had a great time talking to Caitlin and hopefully you enjoy the episode. [music] 02:01  Caitlin (C): I’m Caitlin McDonald. I'm a literary agent at Donald Maass literary agency. I represent primarily Science Fiction and Fantasy for adult and young adult, as well as a little bit of nonfiction. I've been in the business for... I think, eight or nine years no? I lost track, but around there. R: So over eight or nine years you've seen it change a little bit, with going, you know, so heavy on digital all of a sudden, and the opportunities for print on demand, opening up smaller publishers… C: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, at my first agency I was involved in a lot of reworking backlist contracts that had no language for digital to kind of, you know, deal with that change that was really becoming a huge deal. That was 2011, so... there was a lot. It was, obviously 2008 was kind of when digital really hit the market—  K: Yeah. R: Right. C: —started to become... um, but like, 2011 was when people really said, "Okay, this isn't going away. This is serious." [Kaelyn and Caitlin talking over each other and laughing.] K: Oh, people will read things off screens! They don't always need the physical book in their hand. C: And it's not going to kill paper! K: No, no not it's not. C: It's a supplement. K: Yeah. So, Caitlin, could you maybe tell us a little about what a literary agent does? Because I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there about, like, "Oh, as soon as I get an agent, that's it, then my book's gonna get signed," or, "I'm never gonna do this unless I get a literary agent." Um, I think a lot of authors who are looking for agents maybe don't always know what the agent will do for them. What their job is, after you sign with them. C: Sure, so there are some things that kind of differ from agent to agent, particularly, there's also differences between if you have an agent who focuses on Non Fiction or, versus Fiction. So, it's always worth having a conversation with an agent and asking this question of them directly if they're offering representation because their answer may vary from what I'm about to describe here. But, at the, you know, the basic level, typically, in addition to most of us these days do editorial. So, I will do at least two rounds on a manuscript before I send it out on submission even after I've acquired it, there's always gonna be at least one round of line editing but usually even before that, I'm doing at least one round of structural edits, areas where I'm saying, "I love this character but strengthen their character arc, you know, make their motivations clearer.” “X Y Z isn't working, let's find a way to fix that.” So, I always make sure that I'm doing editorial before we go out on submission. Obviously, submission is the Big Thing™, that's what everyone gets an agent for, but even after we have that deal in place for you, part of our job is to negotiate it so that it's the best deal it could be, both in terms of the offers but also the contract language. So sometimes there are elements that, you know, authors don't necessarily know or that don't come up in the offer point, so it's not a deal point of how much money you're getting, what sub-rights you're contracting out, but really nitty gritty language in the contract that might be boilerplate between the agency and the publishing house but maybe the publisher recently revised their standard contract, so we have to make sure that the language is still what we agreed to. You know, really little things, we're here to make sure that everything is the best it could possibly be for our authors. And then, also staying on top of everything afterwards as well. Os I don't just well, “Here's your editor, the book deal is signed, it's their problem." I'm still there to make sure that you know, everyone is on target for deadline, that the publisher is delivering on publicity and marketing that they agreed to. That, if there are any concerns coming up, a copyeditor who's making changes that the author doesn't like—I've had that problem before. Anything that, you know, any concerns my author has, any discrepancies, any time issues, all of that, I'm here to kind of be a mediator between my author and the publisher. If an author has a problem with anything, if they have a question they're afraid to ask the editor directly, I'm here to kind of be the difficult person so that the author can maintain their good relationship with the editor. The author should never have to ask a hard question or demand something that is going to seem pushy, because that's my job. I'm the one who gets to be pushy and maybe be the person that the publisher goes, "Ugh, them again." But they'll get to have a good relationship with their author. K: I always really enjoy going through the agent because authors, you know, don't wanna be pushy and they're a little, "Oh, I don't want to step on anyone's toes here," and with the agent it's like, "Okay, let's just figure this out." C: Exactly. We also know what's standard. What's a reasonable request where we can come in and say, "Okay, the publisher's not going to be able to do that but here's a compromise that we can suggest." So we can help mediate a lot of those elements where an author may want something but not know whether it's standard, whether it's something that they should ask for or can ask for, not knowing what is normal. K: Yeah I mean for a lot of authors this is kinda their first foray into publishing and it's overwhelming and it's things that they think they should know already and they really don't. And there's no reason that they should. So, yeah, having and agent, someone that's in your court and able to help you navigate that is so valuable. A lot of people who're going to be listening to this probably do not have an agent already, and they want one. When you're evaluating potential clients to take on. What are you looking for? Obviously a good book is the first major component. But beyond that, is there anything you kind of take into consideration when making decisions on these things? C: Certainly there's an element of understanding how to pitch, clear market identity, knowing that they clearly understand and read within their genre. So, they may... I don't expect them to, you know, know every, have read every book and be as on top of the industry and what's coming out in the next, you know, year, as someone who's in the industry, but I do expect that they read within their genre, that they have comp titles that are relevant, that they show an understanding of what readers are looking for in the sense that they themselves are a reader. So sometimes I'll see queries that come in and describe.. some.. they say, "Oh, this pitch is something that's never been done before," and clearly it has. Then I'm going, "Okay. You definitely don't read this genre at all, and this is probably not a good fit." You need to really make sure you're reading in your genre and demonstrate some understanding of it, because otherwise we will be able to tell. Uh, the other thing that is really helpful is a little bit of that personalization when you're pitching to an agent can just be really helpful. It's not necessary, per se, but I do find it incredibly helpful to show that you know, you've done a little bit of research and it gets me more excited about a project if you know things that I'm specifically looking for. Not just my genre but specific details of things I'm interested in things that I'm looking for that you can cite and say, "Yes, my work has this and I know you want that." Then that can really get me excited about it before I even get to the sample pages and that's a really good way of grabbing an agent's attention. K: You hear that, listeners? Slapping the same thing together and sending it out over and over again is not the best way to get someone's attention, actually doing some research and putting some time into —because that's something we talk about a lot, is this is not an easy process, so if it seems easy to you you're probably not doing it the right way.  R: So one place that folks can find your particular manuscript interests would be on your submissions page? Your submissions guidelines, generally. Um, lightly browse (do not stalk) your twitter, and if the agent is listed on Manuscript Wishlist, which is a website that like, puts together a lot of agents. They can fill out profiles and keep it updated themselves of what they're looking for. That's a couple of places where you can find out, is this agent interested in something I'm writing, and also a lot of agents will have the headers on their social media include the books they've worked on. So if you look at that header photo, it's like a real quick double-check. Is anything.. do I write like anything on here. One, if you haven't read anything on there, stop what you're doing if you're really interested in that agent, and read something that they've worked on. But, it's a quick check, just like, "None of this is anything like what I write, maybe I should look for a different agent, and not waste their time." K: Yeah. Along those lines, one of the questions we had sent along was, "Agents, when they open for queries, this has to do with the alignment of the stars, correct?" C: Absolutely. K: "And the tidal forces of the moon and..." R: "Magic. Lots of magic." K: "And various other natural phenomenon." But when those things happen, what makes you decide like, "Okay, I'm ready to be open for queries again. I'm ready to take on new clients"?
C: I man, I'm sure it's different for every agent. For me, specifically, it really has to do with how much time that I have. How I'm doing with current client manuscripts. Whether I've caught up on all of the queries already in my inbox. That's often something I have to make a really concentrated push, after I close to queries, to then get through all of the ones that are still need to be responded to. Then give myself a little bit of time to get through some manuscripts. I wish I could say that I only open to queries when I've responded to all of the fulls that I've already requested, but that's not the case because then I'd probably never open to queries." K: as an acquisitions editor, I can say the same thing, that I always have a few that I'm still working through but it's like, "But I also need more for the future, so we're gonna open for submissions again." It's hard to balance that. C: Yeah, yeah it is and the work-life balance as well, there's so many elements. Because I think the thing to keep in mind is that most agents aren't reading queries during work hours. They're reading them during their own personal time. Our work hours are dedicated to our clients, editing manuscripts, possibly reading fulls, but for the most part, it is working on our clients and editing the existing manuscripts, going out on submission, making sure everything is up to date. All of the work that is involved with being an agent for our existing clients is pretty much a full time job and finding new clients to add to our list is an important part of our job but it also usually happens outside of the parameters of our forty-fifty hour work week whatever you .. however you define that. I'm often sending queries at ten o'clock at night and that's just how it is. When you have the time for it. K; Yeah. Same thing. I get responses from people that are like, "Uh, were you up this late?" I'm like, "I'm up that late every night. That's when I get my work done!" We talked about this a little you know, when you said what does a literary agent do, but: relationships with authors. Obviously, like, one of your big things is, you're in that person's court. You are their advocate, you are there, making sure that they get the best possible publishing deal, making sure everyone's happy, handling difficult situations for them. But beyond that, your relationship with a writer, what is that like? What do they expect from you? Obviously, it will change depending on how things are happening in their career, but what's your relationship like leading up to a release and then, for example, afterwards? C: This is such a good question because it' actually really important for an author to know what they need about themselves before, if they can. Which is hard to know if you've never had an agent, but if you can try to figure out 'what's important to me?' beforehand, then having that conversation helps you know whether the agent is going to be a good fit for you. Because it really varies for all of my clients. Some of them, you know, I'm in almost constant touch with. Some of them I only head from them when they have a manuscript ready and they send it and it's already revised and they feel like they just... "here it is!" and others are going, "Here are my next... here are one-sentence pitches for my next eight ideas, which one should I do?" "Here's a partial draft." so it really really varies. I've got some authors where I'm working with them on all sorts of different levels of early stages of manuscripts and others that don't come to me until they've got something nearly complete, or at least a full first draft, or a full synopsis, you know, it really really varies. and then the level of contact that they want also varies from author to author there are some who I'm here as you know an emotional support as well as all of the other tasks that my job entails. And then others who are very happy to sort of sit back and only reach out when they actually have a specific publishing question or concern that needs to be addresses. So it really really varies, wildly and it's important to kind of know "how much do I want my agent to be in touch?""Am I more comfortable with email of phone?" "Am I going to be someone who wants to be able to text my agent?" These are the kind of questions that it helps to be able to look a little bit inside and say, "this is.. these are the kinds of communication limits that I want with an agent," and to talk to them about it beforehand and make sure that that's what you're going to be getting from the agent you're looking for. K: Well now, you, I'm sure, in a lot of situations, have to set some boundaries. C: That is true, um, but it.. there often, I find, it's something that is done not necessarily explicitly. I kind of set what I'm comfortable with and if that means I'm not responding to emails that aren't super important on the weekend, then that's just something isn't necessarily discussed beforehand, per se? I know this sounds a little bit contradictory to what I just said, but like R: No but by your responses, you're setting their expectations. C: Exactly. Exactly. K: I know some people that, when they first signed with their agent they're like, "I have this question," and I'm like, "Well go ask your agent then." C: Yes. Exactly. K: "That's what they're there for." "I don't wanna bother them." "That.. I.. you are not bothering them. Other.. you know, you're not calling them at one in the morning having a breakdown about something." That's bothering. Don't do that. C:  Yes, exactly. We're here as a resource so you should always feel comfortable reaching out to your agent about anything that is publishing and work related. That, at least, you should always feel comfortable doing. They might set the parameters of how to do that. Is it okay to just call them ay any time, or do they prefer email? Do they give you their number so you can text them? Depends. I mean, I know many agents prefer not to do that which I think is absolutely a good idea but I'm sure that there are some that are perfectly comfortable with it. So you know, having that conversation beforehand and finding what their preferred system is so that you know whether it's compatible with your preferred system, that's really the key. K: Gotcha. So, we had kind of also talked about this briefly, but one of the other questions we wanted to talk about is, and I'm gonna kinda combine two things here: what catches your eye in query letters, in authors that are querying you, and at the same time, what are some red flags? C: So, what catches my eye, I think'd be a little like what I talked about before, something that really speaks to me personally and actually addresses things that I have specifically said that I'm looking for. Anything that is particularly really unique, like actually finds a way to give me an unexpected twist within the pitch itself. I'm also.. I do really appreciate comp titles that kind of combine, you know, taking two very very disparate comps and combining them to say "here are two things that are nothing alike but if you combined them, that's my book." Then you can get a sense of, "Oh, here is something really new and unique." I once got a query that said it's Jane Austin's Emma meets Dexter. And then.. K: Oh! C: Yeah, and then the plots came out, like, Yes, that makes sense! But getting that, those kind of comp titles, I went, "That is very interesting and I want to learn more." So, you know, it's.. comp titles don't have to be like that but they can be a very interesting way to condense a unique aspect of your book into one creative, short pithy pitch. In terms of red flags, I think it's often a, like I said before, very clear not understanding of their genre or the type of book I'm looking for if they very clearly have misunderstood, not just the genre per se, but something say, comes in and is pretty heavily misogynistic in a certain way or something that just, like, if you check my social media, I'm very clearly not interested in works that are, you know, a certain way, even if they are science fiction or fantasy. And then, also I would say another huge red flag is authors who feel the need to attack other authors or existing books for a genre in their query letter. K: Oh really?
C: that is never good. don't be that person. K: No. C: Yes, I've definitely those books that come in say, "Well, this book was terrible," or "Nothing in YA is good anymore," or, "Twilight was terrible!" K: Oh my god. C: Don't be that person. That's... you know, don't attack other authors in your query. It's not a good look. K: I'm making this face right now because I have read so many query letters and I have never seen that.  C: Really? K: That's like. now see, watch.. cause we're open for submissions now so I'm gonna get like ten of those. Now that I've said that but like, oh my god, wow. I thought I'd seen everything. That's a new one. Okay. R: Actually that comes up on Twitter a lot. I see a lot of agents saying "Please don't do this. You know, don't insult J K Rowling because you think that will make your book sound more intelligent. It doesn't." K: It doesn't and I mean, you know. Come on, Harry Potter. R:  Regardless of whether you like it, it was very successful. An agent wouldn't mind a Harry Potter. C: And it sets yu up as a person who is going to be not someone who plays ball with the industry if you're going to be someone like that then that doesn't send a good message about the type of person you're going to be in terms of how you interact with other authors and publishers. and the fact is other authors: those are your peers, those are your support network. you need other authors because their success is your success. And their blurbs are how you get found and you all have to support each other and so if you're not going to be interested in doing that then you're probably not going to succeed in the book industry. K: I've done a couple things over the years and a question I get a lot is well you guys are like, you know a small independent press, and "yes, we are, it's a lot of fun," "So what about competition from this what about..." It's not like... it's not competition. People, I think. It's not the same as cheering for a sports team. You don't love one team and therefor their failure is other teams' success. People who love and read these genres of books are just going to keep looking for more things to read. So everyone succeeding you know especially in similar veins that you're working in, that's great for you as an author because that means more people might come across your book as a result of that. C: Exactly. K: But it is very interesting when you look at these and you're evaluating if you think you can work with this person. Can I help no only them but like, I need to be successful here. Your author's success is the agent's success but you still have to work within the industry and you still have to be able to put together and sell a book at the end of the day and if you're presenting yourself in a way that's gonna make your agent think "I'm not sure I can do this with this person" that's gonna drive them away.  R: We talk a lot about querying an agent for the first time, creating a new relationship with them, but frequently, especially in genre fiction, book deals are for more than one book. So once you have entered into like the second in a series or the second book that's been optioned as part of the same contract, does your relationship change with the author at all? C: Um, yes, so it's very much, I think, it depends from agent to agent but for me, I'm very much willing to work with authors as early as they have pitch ideas. So they will come to me with, you know, ideas, with early drafts, and I'll be definitely working on things much earlier than I would be than a query. So, obviously, when you query your manuscript should be as close to final as you can possibly make it. You should have already had some beta readers, you should have already done editing, and so at that point the hope is that it will only take a few more rounds with an agent before it's ready to go on submission. Obviously for your second or third book, and books after that, that's necessarily not the case. So yes, I am seeing much earlier drafts. I have worked on books that are completely rewritten from scratch multiple times before going to the publisher ad also part of it is deciding what the next book should be sometimes. So I've had clients where we look at their first book and where it fit in the market place, and their other book ideas, some of which might be very different from the first book, and others might be in between and we say, "okay, how do you want to be positioned in the marketplace as your career? Do you want to be a YA author or do you want to be an adult author? Do you want to be a horror author or do you want to be a fantasy author? If you want to be both that's fine, but if you really feel strongly about one of these things, and you just happen to have one book idea that falls outside that parameter, then maybe we don't so that as the second book, maybe that's the third or fourth. Maybe that's an outlier book." So, figuring out how the author wants to be positioned in the marketplace and making sure that we are following a trajectory that will achieve that is part of what I help them do. K: That's something that I think a lot of people don't realize a lot of agents do is, basically helping the author come up with an identity. And how they're gonna fit into the marketplace, what they want to be known for. Yeah that's really interesting to think about as well. Anything that you wish people knew about literary agents? Any giant misconceptions you frequently come across? You know, obviously the stuff about the bloodletting is all ~true, but the rest of it? C: I think that the big thing I would  just... I really wish to share with people is that I promise we're not scary. It's... We're just people like you. We just love books, like you. I.. when I got to conferences there are so many people who are so scared and I just want to hug them and say, "No, it's okay, I promise.. there's nothing to be scared of." K: Wait, quick qualification. If you run into Caitlin at a conference do not walk up to her and hug her immediately. Ask first. C: Thank you. Fair. Thank you. Yeah, but I also there's just a I feel like there's a I don't wanna say a culture of self-rejection but there is.. I see a lot of self-rejection— K: Oh, yeah, absolutely. C: —on the internet and on social media and people will ask me, "Can I query you?" and I'm going, "Why are you asking me? Just do it. Just do it!" You know, alway always give it a shot and you know, we're just here because we love books and we want to help you succeed. Like we want authors to succeed. We want books to succeed. We're not out here saying no to books because we're up in a castle laughing at all of you. We really really want these books to succeed. We want to see more books that we love. And most of the time, when we reject something, it's with a heavy heart. It's, "I love this pitch but the writing just wasn't quite there yet, but man, I hope they come back to me with another project in a couple of years when they've really honed their skill and improved their writing." You know that's really where we're coming from is, "Not this one, but keep working at it. We're waiting for you to come back next time and really nail it." K: to everyone I hope hearing that is encouraging. I'm encouraged just listening to it and I'm not even querying an agent. Thank you so much for talking to us. This was really a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this conversation. C: Of course, well thank you for having me, it's been great.  K: So, where can people find you on the socials? C: I'm on most social media @literallycait that's c-a-i-t short for Caitlin, and on the Donald Maass website which is MaassAgency.com. R: Alright so is there anything else that you wanna tease for people, books coming out or anything like that? C: Sure I've got a couple really exciting books coming out over the next month or two. We've got The Resurrectionist of Caligo by Wendy Trimboli and Alicia Zaloga, which is very very exciting. Kind of dark Victorian-esque fantasy, which would be great for anyone who's a fan of the podcast Sawbones. If you're into that you'll definitely like this book. And I've also got The Library of the Unwritten, by A J Hackwith, which is K: Yes C: Fabulous Hell based fntasy about books that are unwritten escaping their library and going on walkabout and the librarion having to chase them down it's very fun and if you love books it really explores the concepts of narrative and character and what it means to have those elements and give them agency so it's a really it's a love letter to the concept of writing. It's fabulous. K: That one's on my list, I'm very excited for that one. C: Oh good. K: Okay, so. The take away here: Agents; they're people just like the rest of us. R: At least one is. K: One of them anyway. The rest are in the castle. R: Okay, thank you so much Caitlin, we really appreciate your time. C: Thank you. 31:34 [Music]
R: Thanks, everyone, for joining us for another episode of We Make Books. If you have any questions that you want answered in future episodes or just have questions in general remember you can find us on twitter @WMBcast, same for instagram, or WMBcast.com. If you find value in the content we provide, we would really appreciate your support at patreon.com/WMBcast. If you can't provide financial support, we totally understand, and what you could really do to help us is spread the word about this podcast. You can do that by sharing a particular episode with a friend who can find it useful, or if you leave a rating and review at iTunes, it will feed that algorithm and help other people find our podcast too. Of course you can always retweet our episodes on twitter.  Thank you so much for listening and we will talk to you soon.

What to do, what to do? The clock feels like it's ticking and I'm stuck between buying a product in plastic or driving across town to buy it in glass? Then I'm stuck and a wave of eco-anxiety freezes me. Sound familiar? Today Theresa and I talk all about our current dilemmas, confusion and climate anxiety, and how to find the balance through it all. Remember to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! Global Climate Strike website: https://globalclimatestrike.net/ New episodes every Sunday. You can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Anchor, Overcast and more. Support the podcast at www.anchor.fm/practicallyzerowaste/support Contact us at practicallyzerowaste@gmail.com Instagram @practicallyzerowastepod @elsbethcallaghan Facebook Practically Zero Waste Podcast --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/practicallyzerowaste/message

---------------------- Appreciation written, produced, and narrated by Remedy Robinson Twitter: @slowdragremedy Email: slowdragwithremedy@gmail.com Podcast music by https://www.fesliyanstudios.com Rate this Podcast: https://ratethispodcast.com/slowdrag ---------------------- Companion Blog: https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/slowdragwithremedy.home.blog/44  References: “Alibi”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1kqc7V6Vn8&list=RDg1kqc7V6Vn8&start_radio=1  Elvis Costello Wiki Resource, "Alibi": http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php/Alibi  The Gwendolyn Letters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQieshbrzpI So, until next time, Adieu, my little ballyhoo   "Alibi" Lyrics: You did it 'cos you wanted Alibi, alibi And you took it 'Cos you need it Alibi, alibi But if I've done something wrong there's no "ifs and buts" 'Cos I love you just as much as I hate your guts Alibi, alibi, alibi… And you don't need anybody Alibi, alibi But you are the only one who knows this Alibi, alibi You deserve it 'cos you're special Alibi, alibi Maybe Jesus wants you for a sunbeam Alibi, alibi But if I've left something out I apologise But if you look in my eyes Then I'm sure you'll see… Alibis, alibis, alibis… Sometimes I'm so forgiving Everything seems bad to me But I can't go on living With this alibi, alibi, alibi… "Insane," what a mundane Alibi, alibi And you only wanted to be famous Alibi, alibi Sorry, but your mummy doesn't love you Alibi, alibi Stop me if you've heard this… Alibi, alibi But if I've done something right then don't be surprised There are soldiers who will kill but refuse to die But if I've done something wrong there's no "ifs and buts" 'Cos I love you just as much as I hate your guts Alibi, alibi, alibi, alibi… You were weak… You couldn't help it Alibi, alibi But you never had a pony Alibi, alibi (chorus) And you're such a people person Alibi, alibi And I will be true to you forever Alibi, alibi But you're stupid and you're lazy Alibi, alibi Maybe we can make the future better Alibi, alibi (chorus) Sometimes I'm so forgiving Everything seems bad to me But I can't go on living With this alibi, alibi, alibi… You were happy when you were poor And more honest and that's your… Alibi, alibi Sister is a whore, brother isn't sure Alibi, alibi You don't fit the body that you're trapped in Alibi, alibi Papa's got a brand new Alibi, alibi But if I've done something wrong there's no "ifs and buts" 'Cos I love you just as much as I hate your guts But if I've left something out I apologise But if you look in my eyes Then I'm sure you'll see… Alibis, alibis, alibis…

I'm very excited to share with you a little bit more on how I actually get paid to find my leads. In the past, I have taught this concept several times… But I wanna share with you some more examples. When I was going around talking to a bunch of friends and family… And I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do… I'm not bad mouthing that, you understand? There's nothing wrong with talking to friends and family. Where I have the issue is before you even approach them, when you know, "Hey, they're not gonna be a great fit," but you go forward anyway. Or you have to convince them in. Have you ever noticed that those are the people that you have to hold a cattle prod to their back to get them to do anything. I don't want that kind of individual. I want somebody who WANTS to be in, who WANTS to be a runner, who is ready to work. And who actually WANTS to build a real asset… And not just a little money on the side. I WANT actual runners, people who are looking to build a business. GENERATING LEADS WITH FRONT-END PRODUCTS Every business needs leads. So what do you do? That was the issue I ran into. I remember when I finally walked through my entire list, and there were multiple times I wrote out 240 people… And I was like, "Look at all these people. Oh, my gosh. And if they got even a fifth of that... " And you start playing the percentage game. "What island will I buy?" I joke about that, but that was one of the things that I was like, "Holy cow." And it was one of the things that I was super concerned about when it suddenly wasn't working 'cause I was like, "Where else do I get my leads from? I have no idea where to get my leads." And suddenly the business was dead and I couldn't talk to anybody. This is something that, if you've not run into in the past... You're gonna run into it. If you don't figure out a lead machine, if you don't figure out a lead system, it's going to DIE. Every business that does not have consistent leads and cash flow dies. Those are the two numbers you should always watch. How many leads am I getting? Actual leads. Not just like, "I'm kinda interested." Qualified leads. Track them every month. We started doing that on a white board. When we started actually tracking the leads, for some reason without me even consciously doing more, we doubled the next month. Then after that it was like, another 50% higher than that… Just by us tracking it. I encourage you to start tracking the amount of leads coming in. ACQUIRING CUSTOMERS WITH FRONT-END PRODUCTS I wanna share with you ONE of my absolute favorite ways to not only get leads, but also get them faster while not having to pay for them. ' You need to understand a principle that all of us Internet marketers understand… Whoever can pay the most to acquire a customer wins. You can even have a worse product, but be able to spend more to acquire customer profitably, and you will WIN against the people who have better products. It's ONE of the major reasons why, when big MLMs say things like, "The product's so great, just go get it in front of the people and it sells itself." That might be true to a very small percentage of people… But the reality is, if I can spend $50 to acquire a customer and you can only spend $5, I am going to dominate you, even with a worse product. That’s why you have to think about this like, "Okay, so how do I actually make a lead machine?" All I do is teach people how to make lead machines, and wait for them to qualify themselves and say, "You know what, I am interested, Stephen. I'm interested in whatever you're doing. Let me come over and start chatting with you." I have some numbers here and what I don't want this to be is like, "Look at Stephen showing all the numbers of all the stuff he's making." Could you raise your hand right now and be like, "I will not get offended". FRONT-END PRODUCTS ARE UNAFFILIATED WITH MLM I wanna share with you real life stats of things that I'm actually doing… This is just ONE of my products that is actually generating leads for me. Qualifying them and teaching the ones are a good fit. I'm not saying that they're not good if they don't join my downline… Some of them already have one, which is great, they should stay in theirs. I'm not trying to pull from other places. That's not what I'm doing here. What I'm saying is there's a group of people who are already unhappy with what they're in. There's a certain kind of ‘moon's aligned’ individual. Q: Is it everybody? A: No… And it shouldn't be. What I do is create these front-end products that are unaffiliated with my MLM. It doesn't even say what I'm in. It's unaffiliated. I don't teach their stuff I'm not selling their products I don't do anything … I have something literally in the front here. I don't talk about it, I'm not speaking about it, I'm not saying the name of the product. I'm not even alluding. I keep my nose so clean. I'm not saying what it is that I'm actually in… And I know it drives some of you guys crazy. But that's the point! I create these front-end products that attract the dream person that I would love to have inside my downline. WHAT FRONT-END PRODUCTS DOES YOUR DREAM CUSTOMER WANT? It's gonna be really hard to attract your dream customer or your dream downline member if you don't even know what that looks like. Get good at defining what your dream is… And we talk a lot more about that. If you're liking this stuff, go to secretmlmhacks.com and grab the program. So I’ve got my dream customer… And what I'm gonna go do is figure out what this person is struggling with. I'm gonna figure out what things they're having a hard time with. Maybe they haven't gotten over their fear of talking to somebody. How can I make a general product (meaning it's not MLM company specific) teaching people how to overcome their fear of speaking to people? What I do is list a whole bunch of problems… Problems and problems and problems and problems and problems and problems… I go through and I look to see the ones that I could solve, like, "Oh, you know what, I actually know what it's like to be afraid of speaking to people, here's how I got over that." What if I was to film a small little course and sell that for a little bit of money? SELL IT… Don't give it away for free. Now I have a product that’s NOT affiliated with my MLM. It doesn't say the name, it doesn't say the product, no alluding… There's no cross-over. All I'm doing is I am creating actual value. THE LARSEN DEFINITION OF ‘VALUE’ What IS value? Value is when you solve a legitimate, expensive problem. It has to be expensive because you need to get paid; this is capitalism. It has to be legitimate because it can't be like, "Well, it's a serious issue." In one of my favorite Shark Tank episodes ever, the reason why they didn't wanna take the time of day to listen to this lady is because they were like, "You didn't solve an actual issue here. You just made an interesting trinket." Then she was like, "No, it's a real problem." They're like, "It's not a real problem, it's like a cute thing." You have to solve an actual issue. Value is solving a legitimate, expensive problem. How can I cause value in whatever they're doing? I want them to have success in their thing. Then I'm gonna solve these and make my own products and sell them because it's capitalism. Then I'm gonna make this big old list of people who are buying and not buying... You have buyers and people who just opted in and didn't actually purchase… Then I'm gonna keep providing value to the buyers (I'm gonna sell them the next thing), the people who just opted in (I'm gonna get them to try to buy the current thing). What it allows me to do is spend ad money. I don't take profit from these things, that's not the point. ADS FOR FRONT-END PRODUCTS The point is the recoup ad cost, because if I can spend money on ads... And I got ads, ads, ads… I can talk to so many more dream people than those who are not spending ads. Money moves faster than time. So I'm gonna go spend money on ads… Then they're gonna come pay me money, and I'm just gonna recycle it right back into the ads. What it's doing is spitting out a list of qualified people who have said, "I'm really actually serious about this." The mentality of somebody who spends nothing versus $1 is so much different. FREE versus $1 is the longest road ever. That's why I can sell something that is super cheap. This is how I do it. Now I got a list of people who are buyers and I'm gonna ask them to buy the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. I'm not talking about MLM or about the products. I'm not alluding to the products, I'm not trying to be sneaky, I'm not trying to ride the line as much as I can. The reason I'm walking through this again because we've noticed this is one of the MAJOR questions people have, and they get stressed out about it. Just keep it simple. All I'm doing is… Making a product Solving a legitimate issue in the marketplace that people pay for that is completely unaffiliated with my MLM WHAT IS A SELF-LIQUIDATING OFFER? We call this process a self-liquidating offer. Meaning, I'm gonna make an offer but it self-liquidates. I'm not selling it to go make a bunch of money and take it, I'm only doing it so that I can spend more on ads that attracts my dream customer. All I do is I make a cool product that only my dream customer would be interested in. I wanna talk to ONLY those people who have had a hard time, a scary time with talking to people. They have a hard time with opening their mouth, they don't know what to say in front of people, they clam up. If you like this, again, go to secretmlmhacks.com and buy the program. **This is my blatant pitch** As we've gotten further down the show, I'm more blatantly pitching it because it's in the program! Just go to the program. I can't give you EVERYTHING on this podcast. When you say… What: Is my dream customer? Issues are they having? Are those are legitimate and valuable and expensive problems that I can actually solve? Then I'm gonna go in and make that, and I'm gonna make it really awesome. I'm gonna over-deliver. I want a reputation for delivering more value than they bought… Which is what I do, and why my offers are so huge, and why I put so much stuff in them to help you and actually accelerate the success with it. ADDING VALUE TO YOUR FRONT-END PRODUCTS I'm gonna pump tons and tons of stuff in there… Then they're like, "Man, this guy's really helping me." They come and they purchase. They buy the product, and then I'll have a list of people who bought it, and those who didn't (and that's okay)... But the buyers list might buy the next thing. All that's doing is feeding the pot of ads. And those who opted in, maybe they just need to hear more of my stuff. Let's send them to the podcast. There's always people who reach out and say, "Stephen, dude, whatever you're in, I just wanna join it because I like the structure that you're giving." And I'm like, "Cool." Q: Did I outbound pitch? A: No. Q: Did I talk about my MLM in these ads? A: Heck, no. Q: Did I talk about my MLM in these products? A: Absolutely not. It's a separate island… And that's why it works so well. MY SELF-LIQUIDATING OFFER STATS I wanted to share with you a few numbers on this… So you can see how powerful the principle really is . It's life changing. It changes the entire MLM model (and there's nothing wrong with that). It's multi-level marketing. That doesn't mean you can't use actual tactics that are used in other businesses. One of the products that I sell is the Secret MLM Hacks product. I just wanna share with you some of the numbers on this… So that you can see me doing this in live action. What I have over here is a dream customer… And I have my MLM downline. REMEMBER: it's its own island… Not talking about it, not sharing anything about it, keeping it separate, keeping it separate. As of right now (me recording this) the program is $997. We are increasing the price to $1,500 (if not $2,000) soon. The ONLY reason why is because we have found that the person who is our dream customer, they're already at a certain level of success. It's fine if you're new, and we have options for you if you can't afford that kind of thing (and that's totally fine). The other reason is because I have a lot of people who come in now and are hoping to fulfill on it. I have to pay them too. I'm gonna show you gross numbers. This is not the actual profit numbers. I've been selling Secret MLM Hacks for over a year and a half now. I'll just grab the most recent year… [Right now it's July 26th… So I grab July 26th through the beginning of July 2018. July 2018, July 2018 through 2019.] HOW MUCH MONEY DO MY FRONT-END PRODUCTS MAKE? I printed my stats sheet right before I got on this… We got $429,000. The earnings per click, we're getting $54 per click (which is pretty awesome). And the average cart value is $1,157. … Meaning for every purchaser of Secret MLM Hacks, even though it's a $997 product, we're actually getting MORE than that. And I wanna share with you guys WHY, and why this is such a powerful principle. I want you to look at and be like, "How can I also?" NOT, "I don't qualify." It's, "How can I?" Just in the last year, we haven't spent that much on ads. I'm gonna walk through a few numbers on this. So we have $429,000. There's a principle here that I want you to understand… The last few podcast episodes I've done on this show have been a lot more informational and instructional… But there's still from a 30,000 ft view… And it's just so that you understand more of what I'm doing. A few people will be like, "You can't do that." Well, I am doing it. And NO, I'm not the only one doing it. I didn't invent this. I observed, and I'm just doing the same, and now I'm LOUD about it. FRONT-END PRODUCT BUYERS AND NON-BUYERS So we have a list of people who just opted in, and then we have a list of people who are our buyers. These are pretty good numbers. There's a metric us, in the internet marketing space, follow. The metric is that for every person… You usually make $1 per person, per month on your list. If you're bad. In the last year 46,000 people have seen the webinar registration page but 22,000 people actually opted in. That's a 48% registration rate. We have 22,000 people who opted in. Because there's always people who opt out (and that's part of the game) we have 20,000 people on that list. About 2,000 people have opted. I'm not the only fish in the pond, man. Go follow someone else. Now, there's one other piece to this… We have spent about $70,000 in ads and have $429,000 in revenue… Which is pretty awesome. Think about this... Q: Would you spend $70,000 to generate $400,000? A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Let me think about this here real quick though. Okay, so... Boom. That's in revenue. This is an SLO. I'm gonna go create a cool piece of value which teaches something amazing. There's no pitch but they come and they ask to join my downline. I'm just driving ads to this. We've spent $70,000 in ads, in the last year we've generated $429,000. I'm kinda kicking myself because I'm like, "That could be way bigger." CHATBOT SELF-LIQUIDATING OFFER We created a self-liquidating offer… And it's a Chatbots thing. In the last year we've had 957 people purchase our $57 thing. That's a revenue of $54,500. $54,000 in SLO revenue. $70,000 - $54,000 = $16,000 $16,000 on ads to generate around $400,000 in cash. We've had 371 purchases of Secret MLM Hacks in the last year. We have a whole product here that is basically paying for our ads. We're almost completely removing our ad cost by having this self-liquidating offer. It's a Chatbots thing that says, "Hey, this isn't the actual thing that you're going to, but if you wanted it's kinda cool." 957 people have paid $57. That's $54,000. I wanna run one more number by you… This is what real marketers on the internet actually look at. What I'm talking about right now is marketing math. Come learn how to do that, Secret MLM Hacks. We do about $2-$3 per person per month on this list. The whole point of the episode is for you to see some live examples. Secret MLM Hacks is $997 right now. We're gonna increase the price. The chatbots thing is $57... And I'll have a whole episode about that in the future. What's interesting is, in the last quarter, it's $160,000 (in the last three months). AVERAGE CART VALUE OF FRONT-END PRODUCTS When somebody buys Secret MLM Hacks, how much money is actually coming through per person? What's interesting is the average cart value is above $997. It's actually $1,146. What does that tell us? For every four chatbot sales, we're getting ONE Secret MLM Hacks sale. Isn't that crazy? In the last week we spent two or three grand on ads, but it generated $13,000. I'm just giving you guys some real life numbers. Guess what? I don't know how to drive Facebook ads. I don't need to know how to drive Facebook ads. Honestly, I don't know how to do most of the things that my business does. To be an entrepreneur, it's not to be an expert in everything. Just go find the who that knows the how and orchestrate it. We are actually almost completely liquidating right now. Those numbers I showed you over the last year, they've improved since a year ago. The numbers now are waaay better than the numbers even a year ago. For every dollar going in, we get three or four bucks out? Tell me another investment vehicle that can do that. You know another place that can give you 400%? I challenge you to go and get Secret MLM Hacks. Go to secretmlmhacks.com. FIND PEOPLE TO PITCH WITH FRONT-END PRODUCTS I know it's tough to find people to pitch after your warm market dries up, right? That moment when you finally run out of family and friends to pitch. I don't see many up lines teaching legitimate lead strategies today. After years of being a lead funnel builder online I got sick of the garbage strategies most MLMs have been teaching their recruits for decades. Whether you simply want more leads to pitch or an automated MLM funnel, head over to secretmlmhacks.com and join the next FREE training. There you're gonna learn the hidden revenue model that only the top MLMers have been using to get paid regardless if you join them. Learn the 3-step system I use to auto recruit my downline of big producers WITHOUT friends or family even knowing that I'm in MLM. If you want to do the same for yourself, head over to secretmlmhacks.com. Again that’s secretmlmhacks.com.

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="no" equal_height_columns="no" menu_anchor="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" id="" background_color="" background_image="" background_position="center center" background_repeat="no-repeat" fade="no" background_parallax="none" parallax_speed="0.3" video_mp4="" video_webm="" video_ogv="" video_url="" video_aspect_ratio="16:9" video_loop="yes" video_mute="yes" overlay_color="" video_preview_image="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding_top="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" padding_right=""][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" layout="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" border_position="all" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding_top="" padding_right="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" center_content="no" last="no" min_height="" hover_type="none" link=""][fusion_text]Watch the live interview below [/fusion_text][fusion_text] Transcription (was completed by automated process.  Please ignore any speech-to-text errors) [00:00:01] This is the get sellers calling you marketing podcasts for real estate agents. And I'm Beatty Carmichael. [00:00:06] For simple to do proven marketing strategies focus exclusively on finding sellers and getting more listings. Visit our Web site, get sellers calling you dot com. [00:00:16] And now let's begin our next session of get sellers calling you. [00:00:23] So, hey, I'm Beatty Carmichael and welcome to another session of the Get Sellers calling you real to podcast. And I'm really excited today to visit with a friend of mine that I've met several years back. And I've just always been amazed with what she's done. And from California named to make sure. So, Krista, say hello. [00:00:43] Hi, Beatty. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's wonderful what you're doing. [00:00:48] Well, I am really thrilled to have you on board. I've worked with a lot of agents and have interviewed a lot of folks. And you're one of the very top in the producing writes that I've worked with. And when you and I spoke a couple of years ago, it was just I was flabbergasted with the volume that you drove and the the ease in which you did it. So I'm excited about what you have to share for our listeners today and what they can take away from it. [00:01:15] Yes. So my goal is just to add as much value as possible. So feel free to ask me any questions. I'm an open book. There's nothing that I'm going to hold back. So you ask away. I will deliver. [00:01:26] I will do that for sure. And just also for those listening. Krista has actually started to share some of this and a coaching program. So we'll talk about that maybe toward the end of the call. But, Krista, I would love to find out real quickly for those listening. This is an Internet call, so just being part in any Internet type of interference. But, Krista, give us a little background on who you are and just to establish why it's important that someone wants to listen to this call from you. [00:01:55] Well, I'm just I'm a mom, number one, and a wife. And I have been in the top 1 percent of real estate agents nationwide for about 17 years running. [00:02:05] So no matter what the market was, I found a way to make sure that I was on top of it. So I sold over two thousand homes in my career personally with me. And that's not a big team of people that was with me and an assistant in a transaction coordinator. So just recently, I've changed my mind the way that I run my team because I now I have a team and they're helping me more so that I can focus on my coaching. But yeah, we're. We love it. [00:02:33] I love it. So I have to ask this question to you, because this is one of the things that really surprised me earlier. How much volume do you do? Do you mind sharing? [00:02:43] As far as numbers. [00:02:44] Yeah. Or just anything. Just to quantify. [00:02:47] So my series sold one hundred and sixty nine homes the year before last. I sold one hundred and fifty one. And last year I sold one hundred and four homes just working on my business five percent of the time. So I literally make my 90 members on my coaching fibrosis on real estate because I want to still make sure I'm on the cutting edge of what's happening and I'm managing my team. But yeah, we sold it over a hundred and four homes last year. Transitioning me out of the business and just being kind of the face of it because of our systems and strategies that we had in place. [00:03:18] I love it. So systems and strategies. [00:03:20] That's what I want to head toward. So long. So you did a lot of volume. You've been able to replicate that volume, having it come in independent from you. Talk to me in terms of what do you do? What what type of systems if. First off, let me ask you this. In the marketplace, are you focused on personal contacts or are you going after more cold market? You're buying leads. What's the general funnels that you work with? [00:03:45] Ok, so let me kind of explain my strategy. Number one, we really, really we utilize social media and video heavily. We we teach it. And that's what's helped me grow my real estate business and help me continue to stay in the forefront. And we focus on sellers primarily, but with that, we get plenty of buyers because we are focused on sellers. So we run. We utilize this video heavily. And what I mean by that is many people will use video maybe, but they won't use it correctly. So they'll do video, but then they'll just put it on their Facebook page or they'll put it on their whatever, but they don't do any kind of marketing behind it. So what we do is we we are I call a community market leader. Right. So my goal is anything real estate or or city related, my city thinks about me. They think real estate or they think community. They know my name. And so we're constantly putting out videos and community videos and we know what's happening in town, what's going on, real estate and not real estate related, but community related without ever asking you to do anything in return. So many times people are always selling themselves. Right. I'm the best thrill driving the number one. I'm this. I'm that instead of just serving. So we teach people to serve and not sell. And by serving you inadvertently will sell, if that makes sense. [00:05:04] And also the me, if I don't mind me interrupting. So you're doing these videos as well. What's going on in them in the space? Where are you sending them? What are you doing with the video? [00:05:15] So first we just try to develop trust. So the first and my initial contact is just to run a Facebook. Right. And just boosting is not enough. You need it. Run your ads to your ads manager account on Facebook because then you can target and retarget. You can create look like audiences. You can really, really know what people are doing and make adjustments based upon what is and what's not working. And we just you know, we utilize the reach objective initially. So we reach as many people as possible in the community and they continue to see us. It's like brand awareness. We're getting them to get to know our brand and we're just giving value. Hey, you know, there's this new subdivision that's being built or versus great new family restaurant that was open. Nor here's here's a new activity that's happening this weekend. Right. Oh, and by the way, interest rates are going up or down or whatever it might be. And then we don't ask for anything. So many people will create funnels and landing pages and they'll ask for people's information or phone number. [00:06:14] But nobody wants to give it to you because they're getting bombarded by ads. But once they get to know you like you and trust you, break down barriers, you become more of an authority figure. They're much more likely to want to be able to want to give you their information. Right. So the strategy that we teach agents is the strategy that I use is we teach you how to get to be known. Right. Because in order to be known, you have to be seen. You have to be heard. So the objective is to let your community get to know you like you trust you be seen as the expert and then you ask for people's information. You know, people are doing it backwards. They're saying, give me your vacation, fill out this ad. Right. Thought this lead form when no one even knows who you are. So you've got to really. It's called relationship marketing, right? It's what I call engagement working. But you're developing a relationship with your community. You're getting to be known as the expert authority and then you're asking for their information. [00:07:07] So we utilize but oh, just say this is brilliant. [00:07:11] You're using you're using Facebook, targeting either custom or look alike or or different audiences. You're building up their recognition of who you are and that built up trust. They're seeing you. And we know that if someone can meet you, they're much more likely to do business with you. So by doing the videos or seeing you, they're getting to trust you. They know like you and Mel, you've won a relationship with them. [00:07:37] Yeah. So then we welcome that listing appointment. They're already hugging me and they feel like I know you. And, you know, I'll be walking around town and everyone's like Krista. That was the marquee doing a, you know, high five. And me, I have no clue who would do whatever is at the time. But they feel like they know because they see me. I'm a I'm a. So you got to think about something like you're losing this. You got to understand how powerful social media is. In 30 days, more video content is uploaded on the Internet in 30 days. Then all of the major networks over the past 30 years, so more networked, more video is uploaded onto Facebook, Instagram, YouTube in one month. Then CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS. I can keep going on in the past 30 years. Right. So it's like you have your own digital marketing platform. You have your own TV right in front of everyone. Because people are not even really watching TV anymore. They're watching like my children do not own cable right there and there. They're going to be a virus very, very soon. People are watching videos or watching YouTube. They're watching Facebook. They're looking at Instagram. They want to know about people. What people are doing. That's the new TV now. [00:08:48] You know, this is brilliant for the sake of our audience who may not be as familiar with Facebook advertising, could you do maybe just a short two, three minute primer on what's going on? You know, you're mentioning Reach, you're mentioning all the different type of campaign objectives and give this little primer and then I want to jump back into where we are. And once that foundation is light and take it a little bit deeper, can we do that? [00:09:13] You mean primer on why you should utilize Facebook? [00:09:16] No, not for those people who may not have done anything with Facebook as manager. OK. So that's kind of new to them. Does that make sense? [00:09:23] Yes. OK. So. Well, first, you have to understand this. The average person goes to Facebook for 51 minutes a day. They go there 17 times. There's two point three billion active users on Facebook right now. This is I'm just going to talk about Facebook, because at the same time, we're not going talk about Instagram and all that. Although Instagram is also a platform that you should be looking into because millennials are more on Instagram and they're on Facebook. Right. And we're starting to see a shift from people buying from Facebook to Instagram. And it's cheaper to advertise on Instagram now than it is on Facebook. Well, let's just talk about Facebook. So the average person, the average agent we have found this is this is true stat. So the National Association of Realtors says that only 16 percent of agents are utilizing Facebook. That's that's a step from the net than they are. We found from our research that less than 1 percent of agents are utilizing it correctly. All right. So most agents are doing is they're posting on their personal page or posting on their business page. But Facebook is an algorithm. They want your money. They want you to pay them. So you've got to pay them to get your ads to show up in front of people. If you're not paying Facebook to show up, to have your ads seen in front of people, you're only being seen by the people who are most likely interacting with you. Right. That's your your best friends and your family members. It's people that are that Facebook is putting your stuff in front of people that are engaging. You're not reaching the rest of your community. [00:10:47] OK. So we create ads and we have anywhere from seventeen thousand one hundred and twenty thousand people that we use that see our ads, which means that we we go into Facebook, we go into our ads manager account. That's step one. Go to Facebook. Set up for ass. Set up an ad up. Get a business page. Right. Then you've got to run your ads through your ads manager account. Many agents will just boost. Now, boosting is not sufficient enough because if you're just boosting, you are not able to do anything with that information. Right. When you set up an ad for your ads, manage your account. You're then able to create lookalike audiences. What that means is you're able to say, hey, this ad ran really, really well. We've got great reach, tons of engagement, engagement, meaning people are liking, commenting and sharing. They're engaging with your ad. So you can say, oh, this ad performed so well. I want you to find more people that are like this. Facebook and the Facebook algorithm will find people that are more likely to engage in your ad. They will create a whole new audience. Right now, the second ability, which is so, so important, is that you're able to reach target and retarget means that you're able to as somebody watches your ad on you, it's it's basically you're creating a funnel. You do a video on three chips to sell your house to get maximum exposure. Right. Then you have, let's say, 50000 people see that ad and then you say, OK, you know, Facebook, I want you to find the people that were the most engaged, the ones that watched more of the video. [00:12:19] The ones that liked are shared. And I want you to send them another video on seven months when selling like make sure you did seven things you have to do in selling to make maximize your investment. Right. And then you can take even for a rookie. Now they watch the first video and the second video. Now I want to send them a link for a CMA. Do I know what your house is worth? Well, yes. These people now, you know, those leads are super qualified, highly engaged leads because they've already watched two of your videos. They're not watching videos on how to sell a house for more money if they're not thinking of selling. So now you take you take you know, maybe you got one hundred leads down to 20 that are super serious, engaged, active sellers. Make sense. So that's the importance of utilizing social media and Facebook, because number one, ninety five percent of buyers and sellers say they search online first. Right. We know according to the National Association of Realtors, that buyers and sellers take a minimum of three to six months. They start looking before they ever take action. Your goal is to show up where they're looking, which is on social media, and B, be there when they finally want to act. So you're developing this relationship with them for months and months and months. And they're they're looking at your step because they're interested. They want to know more. So then when they finally want to act, you're in front of them. And they they've now established you as the expert authority. So when they think about selling, they'll think about you or buying. Right. [00:13:46] You know, this is brilliant because I love the process. You know, I remember when you and I spoke a couple of years ago, you mentioned that when you started to do videos, your business just started taking off. [00:13:59] Do you remember that? [00:14:00] Oh, yeah. That's the one thing people ask me. What's the number one strategy you can tell me to do? And I tell them utilize video but correctly distribute it. [00:14:09] Yes. So this is brilliant. So in real simple. So you're you're taking them, you're pushing content out. You're not asking anything from them. So the content that you're pushing out. Give me an idea. Maybe. You know, I know you meant you rented really quickly earlier. Can you walk me through as an agent if I'm going to do this? What type of content content am I putting out and how frequently am I putting it out into this mass audience? [00:14:36] A here's a nugget right now. All right. You want to number one, if you're going to do anything. Pick a knish. So pick a niche in real estate. Maybe you want to work with a retirement company or you want to do homes on deep water. You want to work in a certain subdivision or you want to work with millennials. Pick Aneesh, and you want to do two content videos initially to start like X, like three, two, three content videos just on that niche. Then every single week do another video on that niche and then take that video, what we call video repurposing. Right. Which means you're gonna take that video, you're going to have it transcribed. There's a thing called red dot com. You're going to upload that video on that transcription and that video onto your Web site. So then you start getting search engine optimization through Google. Now, this is not hard. It's easy. You send your video to rabbits a dollar a minute. Right. You do a three to five minute content video on a specific leash because people are searching that specific need to the videos can be longer. But then what happens is as you start to do this on a regular basis, when someone goes to Google to search, hey, how do I buy a home for the first time or what's the best, you know, interest rates or homes in discovery about deep water? Your information is going to come up like crazy because you haven't reached it. [00:15:54] So meeting is super important and you can really gain a lot of traction really, really quickly if you do it on a regular basis because of the capability for the information that you're putting out there to be seen on Google when you see it. Google loves video. So uploading your videos onto YouTube, right? Get you on to Google, uploading your videos on your Web site, gets you on to Google. So when people start searching that, you're going to start showing up over and over and over again. So that would be my first suggestion is picking each and do it. Now, secondly, you want to do your normal videos that you're going to create for your community and for on a weekly basis. You want to do that to a week and you want to keep them short. Right. Like 30 seconds or or under shorter videos have higher completion rates, shorter videos get watched. More people actually click on the length of a video and they won't watch it. So initially when you're trying to grab someone's attention. Baby, you want to raspberries and quack, quack. And if they're interested, then you can bring them down your funnel and start putting out more content to them. That's similar to the first content. And then you can add you can make it longer. Right. So, for example, you wouldn't say, are you thinking about buying a house this summer? [00:17:03] Oh, my gosh. There's three things you need to know. Remember? Right. Hi, I'm Krista Major. [00:17:07] I sold hundreds of homes and then you're going to buy that. You're the experts. They want to keep listening to you. And then you just give a quick tip or two. For more information and for me to get more details, click on the link below for more. No more explanation. And then they then more. Then they're watching these videos and you're bringing them down your file and they can be longer because you've already grabbed their attention. [00:17:26] That makes sense. So. So you're using the 30 second clips for the mass. You're taking your very narrow niche and you're focusing on that. [00:17:36] And these videos are offering information but not asking for their information, correct? [00:17:43] Yes. Not initially. And then after you've been doing it, then you asked for the information at hand. Having a buyer and seller seminar. Mike, one thing that I'm doing this next Thursday for my community is I'm putting on a local business and professional marketing training free. Right now, I'm marketing it on Facebook. I did a video saying, hey, are you a local business, a professional? I can help you. I'm sure you all know I am right. Why? Because I know how to market. Let me show you how to market your local business and empire. And you're your as a as a professional or a local business. Why am I doing that? Because I'm basically going to be doing a little mini listing presentation without them even knowing it, showing them how we do what we do and how they can do that. But at the same time, showing them, hey, here's an example of how I listen market to house, right? Look, we had one hundred and seventy six thousand people on this on this one housing tour. We had over two hundred and fifteen hours of people watching this one video. Will that help you? So basically, I'm going to be helping them, but also showcasing how we market our homes at the same time to like minded individuals who are local professionals or her own local businesses. [00:18:47] I love it. So when you're doing this video out to just your normal group, these whole 30 second clips and you know, if you if you think about selling, click below. [00:18:56] For those people who are listening, you know, they've done nothing like this before and they're going, oh, my gosh, what do I do? What? Where do I go? Where do I send them when they click below? What's the next step? Is it a Facebook page or what are you doing on that? [00:19:09] So they're through. When you create an app through your ads manager account, you can create this video. Last call to action. There's a traffic objective. There is a reach objective. Brand awareness objective. There is a conversion objective, which means you want them to convert. You're trying to get their information right. There's a video of use subjective depending on what objective you choose. It will change your call to action. So we then take them to a landing page. And if you're let's this and you're going, what the heck is she talking about? I've never heard of a landing page. Here's what I've got to tell you. There is going to be more change in the next six years in technology and there has been in the last 100. That is a true start. You are going to see more change in the next six years than we've seen in the last 100 years in technology and social media. You it's not a matter of should I. I'm thinking about it. You have to. You need to make sure that you are relevant, that you're Zillow proof your recession proof your discount broker, proof. Are you adapting to technology and change? You are going to save yourself from being left in the dust. And if you haven't now, it's OK. Like just start right. It's just like riding a bike or kissing for the first time. You get better and better as you do it. You suck it first. You follow your break your name, nails it, scrape up your face, whatever that is, but then you get better. So it's a matter of you saying, I can do this and I'm gonna do it right. It's scary at first. And everyone hates video. They are afraid of it. They're so fearful of it. But here's the deal. [00:20:39] You look at them, you know, you look at video on and who doesn't like the way you look because that's how you look. [00:20:44] Do you remember? This is me. I like myself. Right. Is video, video, video, video. If I told you the stats on why video is so important, you would die and just not using it. All you need is a cell phone. Everyone's got a cell phone. We all have a camera. This is Isabella's hitting record uploading that and have a go at it. Right. It's not not hard. It's just it's simple. So then you take him to a landing page with the landing page. Then you're then they can you know, you're saying, hey, do you want more information you want to get? What's my home worth or any kind of a market analysis? Do you want to hear a seller guide? You a buyer guide? What do you want? So you're basically continuing to take them down your funnel. The first action is the video. [00:21:26] I love it. So. So. So thanks for this. Really great. What's the next step? How do you. So we're talking about doing the videos. I kind of cut you off to go backwards and say, let's lay the foundation. [00:21:37] Let me let you run again from where you are. Does that work? [00:21:41] Yes. So meaning never was. [00:21:47] So that may be kind of an unfair try to loop back around. So where do we go from here? So I've got I've got an agent and there they're excited that what they're doing, what you're talking about, this has obviously been, you know, this and I've always wanted you know, this is just my personal out of curiosity with you, Krista. When I when we talked a few years ago and you're just doing this amazing volume and it seems like it's consistent. Yes, you're out. The thing that blew my mind is how and now I get it. It's these videos. But there's got to be something a little more that you're doing in terms of the content or in terms of, you know, maybe the question that comes up and I'm I'm trying to get my questions on formulated. You know, you're talking about doing like two videos a week. What do you keep saying on those two videos? I mean, aren't you kind of cycling back around and saying the same thing over and over again or you. [00:22:45] Oh, my gosh. Know, so there's so much to talk about. First of all, you have to understand, it's not just real estate, even though I think we as agents, we don't realize how much people love real estate. I mean, anytime you go to a party and someone knows that you're a real estate agent, what do they ask you? And I'm just going to pause for about 10 seconds here. What do they ask you? They know you're older. What do they ask you? How's the market? Right. So your job is to tell them on a regular basis what's happening in the market, what's happening in their area, what's happening in their community, what's happening in their subdivision. And on top of that, though. Bringing in community related events. What's going on in the community? What's new, what's fun, what's exciting? What are they going to do? What's what's different? What's changing? There's just you can fire. Chips, seller chips, costly mistakes, parts of a contract. What does a contingency mean? How much is a deposit? What does the buyer need to do before even looking? What do you need to make sure once you're in escrow? You do. I mean, you just we can go on and on and on. You know so much about your your subject matter as an agent. But I we think that everyone knows it, too. [00:23:48] They don't. Right. So the trick is not just to be real estate, but also be community. You want to do like one to one wanted unity video. One real estate video. Right. One market update a month. What's happening in the market? How's it changed from last month? All right. Your next video, along with that nation, each nation, nation each. The riches are in the niches. People are afraid of meeting as they feel like they're going to lose out on business. When, quite frankly, you will still have the same amount of business. But if somebody is looking for that specific topic, you're going to show up way more often on that specific topic when you do need. But you'll still show up just the same for everything else. So it's a matter of creating video content properly, making sure it gets seen. Remember Facebook, if you want to have to be seen by your community, by the thousands. Right. Facebook will put your information in front of the people that are more likely to watch it. Their algorithm goes in front of people that already expressed behaviors in liking real estate. Liking realtor, dot com, liking Zillow, you know, liking community events. So they put you in front of them and then you can say, OK, for this ad, I want to try to get video views, go put me in front of people that want to watch my videos, that their algorithm, their Facebook algorithm will do that or it will say, I want you to put this this ad now in front of somebody who is more likely to convert. [00:25:10] So I'm going to use the conversion objective. Right. Right now, I just want to get myself to be seen by everyone. I mean, he is the reach objective. So depending on what your objective what your personal objective is for the ads that you're running is going to change what objective you use on Facebook and what you tell Facebook to do. So it's a matter of creating a video, setting up an ad through your advantage, your account, utilizing your your your choosing, your objective, making sure you have a great call to action and awesome pictures that do not look at Z. The less ads you, the better the more it looks like an ad, the less likely people will clip because they're tired of being sold to and then taking them from clicking on that ad to a landing page, which then will put them right into your serum. So we create Facebook campaigns that go directly from Facebook into our CRM and then we then start marketing. Then I'm putting them on our drip drip campaigns call. [00:26:08] You know, this is you're listening to the get sellers calling you podcast to increase sales from past clients and sphere of influence or from a geographic farm, learn about Agent Dominator. [00:26:18] We guarantee your sales in writing or give your money back to learn more. Visit our website and get sellers calling you dot com and like Agent Dominator from the. [00:26:28] And now back to the podcast. So it's brilliant. And as I'm hearing you, the thing that keeps hitting me and I'm going to talk about what you do in coaching, because I'm sure you you teach this step by step. But it seems almost too simple. [00:26:42] Does that make sense? Yeah. You know, it's it's not simple. It really isn't. I mean, it isn't. It isn't. I mean, it is if you just do it, you can really take it to like on steroids. Meaning. Right. So a good example is one of my students just, um, posted in our group. She's like me before the program and showed her Facebook. It was a literally a flat line. OK. That means how many people saw her. And then she's like now cramming. Krista 's program is like way up here because utilizing it correctly. And so it's so powerful, though. Think about this. You go to a open house and you're just hoping to see a couple of people and maybe it's the neighbors. It's a couple of looky loos, like you run an ad on Facebook. I can spend 50 bucks and I can have, you know, seventy five thousand people see me. I can run an ad for fifty dollars and get two hundred hours of people watching my video because Facebook will tell you how many people you reach. How many people saw you. How much time they saw you. So I can show like we teach our students that one guy. We did it after six weeks, already had thirty seven hours of one video being watched. So I was like, that's like 10 open houses, right. That's you doing more than that? More than 10, 15 open houses. Cause it might be. So it's really, really effective because you're constantly being reminded and you're inadvertently prospecting. So instead of cold calling and door knocking, which I do not cold call, I do not doorknock. I haven't an open house like eight years. My community and everyone's still seeing me because I'm showing up or they're looking they are online. They are on social media. So they're seeing me on a regular basis. So they're reminded they can't forget about me. Right. They can't, you know. [00:28:20] So you're taking you know, if you go back to the traditional model of growing a real estate business, you you set aside hours to go prospecting, to drive in business, and maybe those hours or more, you know, like a 30 to twelve. [00:28:34] All you're doing is you shifting. You're not spending prospecting hours. You're doing video hours, running some Facebook ads. And the way I'm interpreting it, you're doing that and then you're going off and playing or doing something else you want. Just letting it drive business to you. I know it's not quite that easy, but it's that's that's what it sounded. [00:28:53] Yeah. And it's it's not that easy. And we all want to make it seem like it's that easy. But you know what it is? I mean, instead of like I don't on weekends, I don't want to buy donuts for the open house. I want to make those with my kids. Right. Well, I want to cuddle with my husband in the morning. And I don't want to have to go to an open house and buy the balloons, put the signs out. I want. And people are there still seeming like crazy. Mean the number one agent for years and years and years. And this is a strategy that I mean, is it's also the exact same strategy that I've used to get agents from across the country into my coaching program. We've had over 500 agents go through our training in the past 14 months. This exact strategy. Right. It's giving information, giving value, producing content, getting them to know me and then say, OK, now I want you by my book. Right or now. Now that you know me. Why don't you let's talk to you about the coaching program. I don't say he signed up for coaching Brigham Young and whatever. They have to know who I am first. But once you develop that trust and respect. It's kind of like being on this podcast right there. People getting to know me. You like me to trust me. You either like me or you don't. You're like, she's way too crazy for me and you're hyper where I go like this crystal girl. Let me learn more about her. That's exactly what as an agent you need to be doing in your community. He's got to get people to know you. And video people are much more. They're sixty 64 percent more likely to buy a product when there's a video associated with it. You are a product. You're a service. So if people are 64 percent more likely to buy you seeing a video, does it make sense that you should be utilizing it? [00:30:23] That's amazing. Now you're an author. Now see some books back there. I want to talk about those. Can you tell me a little bit about the books you've done? [00:30:30] Yes. So I have one book sell a hundred plus films a year, how we use Engage Your Marketing Technology and Legion to sell 100 plus homes a year every year. That's this one. So a hundred percent here. This will be great for agents. Now, here's the thing, too, about what I'm teaching the strategy. You can be a brand new agent. We teach agents that are brand new to utilize this and they may very quickly position themselves as the expert. You don't have cap listings. You don't have to have any experience. You can just start talking about real estate. Right. And people do not know that you don't have any business. Also, here's a little book that I wrote, three clients in 30 days. I interviewed twenty three top producing agents across the country on if they were to lose all their business and they had to start from scratch in a new city with a new note on how they would generate three clients in 30 days. And they gave their blueprint from day one to day 30 of everything that they would do to generate more business. It's called three clients in 30 days. If you had to start from ground zero, no sphere, no contacts, no past clients. Here's your 30 day top racing blueprint. There's that one. And then like this, this is called fire financially independent. I retire early. Your crappy job will quit itself. This basically teaches people how to utilize a lot of Australians that we've taught them in in both the books and and make sure to turn their passion into you, into into their profits, how they monetize it, market it. [00:31:54] I love it. So talk to me a little bit. Talk to me a little bit about your coaching program. So I'm an agent. I'm loving this. [00:32:01] But I'm going I'm overwhelmed. And I know I'm going to need someone to help me walk this through, you know, walk me through it and make it happen. So is your coaching program about this specific or is it larger? Can you tell? [00:32:15] It's much larger. So we've got like three or three or four different programs out there. One is just the Legion program, and it basically teaches you everything I just talked about. Right. How to how to create it, how to create amazing Facebook campaigns that convert into actual clients. Everyone says they want leaves, leaves, leaves. Leaves are easy. And we generate so many leads. But the problem is you want leads that are more tangible that you can actually manage and that are more serious. And we teach you how to create and how to become the community market leader. How to establish yourself, to gain authority and to gain trust. And then how to create marketing campaigns that will get you the best leads that you can get. And then how to put those into systems and processes utilizing CRM so you can be successful. And then we also have more higher level programs where we literally just teach you. I mean, so much more Instagram, YouTube video repurposing other digital marketing strategies. I know. I know. I guess it's pretty intense, you know, because of the listing process, which is if they had it. It's like you're listing presentation on steroids. We get you a marketing campaign and brochures and just tons of stats. We kind of you're almost like buying our higher level programs or almost buying up like a. It was like a little mini franchise that we really helped agents, whether they're brand new or they're in the middle or they're very experienced, how to take their business from zero, you know, to a lot more around. [00:33:44] I was just recently talking to a prospective client and ours and we're talking about different things. And he said now I've also come across this coaching program. Krista, May short coaching. I think you said, do you know anything about that? As a man, you ought to take her up on that because she is amazing in. And what I love about what I'm hearing, Krista, is you've taken what you've applied. This has driven your business sky high and consistently and now you package it where people can really come alongside you. And I really commend you on that, because as you know, before we're talking, we're talking about another friend of mine who once he went into coaching his income, two and a half times increased, you know, two and a half times increase in like two or three years. And just you can't do it without a coach. [00:34:30] And so I'll tell you what, I have coaches. I mean, I have multiple coaches. And the reason I've always been really good at what I do is I constantly educate myself. I mean, it's constant learning and an implementation of what you're learning and creating different habits. And if you're listening to this, you have to understand something. You don't want to be reactive. You need to be adaptive. Right. Do not be reactive. Be adaptive. And you have got to adapt right now. This is where it's going. And the agents that are are utilizing digital marketing strategies and social media. They are adapting to what is no longer a want but a must. In your business, it's a must. And so they take it very, very seriously and know that it's not easy. Meaning we my program is hard. And I shouldn't say that because all of us want to buy it. But you have to work, right? If you're willing to give it the time that it takes and you're willing to put in the energy and efforts. We teach you how to be a 21st century real estate agent. We're not teaching strategies like cold calling or door knocking or open houses. However, if you want to do an open house, we show you how to market. So you actually get butts in seats, right? You can utilize it to your advantage. But we don't teach those strategies. We teach strategies that are actually working nowadays. And we try to open up your mind to think that there is an easier, more efficient or effective way to reach buyers and sellers in the masses. And it's thinking non traditionally, it doesn't mean you can't do traditional things that you've got to start thinking non traditionally and again, not be reactive, but be adaptive. [00:36:03] That makes sense. I want to shift topics real quick for dispersion as we start to wrap this up, but it ties into this. [00:36:10] So at the beginning, you mentioned Europe, your mom, your realtor, your husband. Can you talk to me a little bit about family life, work balance and how you manage that with what you do and taking care of being all these other responsibilities are so important. [00:36:27] Ok. So even before I was a coach, I rarely worked. Weekends or nights and I know some if you are going. Well, no way. Critic is everyone. But here's the deal. Once you develop enough respect from your community and you're seen as the expert authority, people will wait for you. I mean, I just tell people, listen, I've got a family life, work life balance and I do not work on weekends because I need to be the best that I can be Monday through Friday for you. I also don't like to work nights because I'll never be home. So therefore, just like they make an appointment with their doctor or their attorney or their dentist or their CPA. Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 5:00, I'm the same. Right. So I just set boundaries for myself. And occasionally I'll work on a weekend. I mean, very I can count on one hand in the past year how many times I work on a weekend unless it was in my computer at home with coaching. Right. But going to see a seller or a buyer, I just don't do it. I set boundaries. I also have buyers, agents. Now, I'll give my leads to buyers because I don't have the time to work with buyers. So I give my leads away. Take your referral fee and I focus on sellers. I don't have to work as many weekends and nights. I didn't do that for many years. When my coach said, Krista, you're losing a lot of money. And I said, well, why you're not working buyers. I says, you need to give your leads the way I want. [00:37:39] I don't want to lose the money. And they're like, well, you're losing the money because you're not doing anything with them because you don't have the time. And I was like, oh, yes, I'll do that right away. And I also use I use real ball. That's the serum that I use. And we're now kind of dabbling into Katie Couric. We're gonna compare how Katie Core works in conjunction with real love and care. We're sort of testing, but utilizing really good systems and having great workflows. We've got like over and I think of around 200 workflows in real world. And what that means is if somebody takes an action, then there's a workflow behind it. So, for example, somebody request this, request a market analysis, then I've got a workflow. It's OK. You know, pull, pull the cons, deliver CMA, send a postcard, send the thank you card. Right. Make a phone call. A phone call. And it sends it right to our phone and it says, hey, call this person at this time, here's the phone number. So we processed everything in every phase of the transaction. Right. So that way we're not thinking as much. So when you don't think as much, you utilize more time. You have more time. So I definitely have a work life balance. I know it's very, very difficult. I am a workaholic. I'll say I love it, but I do it more, more at my choice than a necessity because my kind of hobbyist sort of work. You know, I love it. [00:38:55] Well, it's definitely shows itself and I commend you on that because so many agents are just working to a frazzle and they lose sight of the most important reason why they're working, which is usually their family. [00:39:09] Yes. Yes. It's difficult. You know, you don't want to go on vacation and not be able to have a break in working every night, 8:00 or every weekend. I mean, you've got to set boundaries. People appreciate them. And also maybe get a help or a partner or somebody another agent can help you with the phone and such that you can't have time. If you take time, you'll you'll save more time. Right. Another really good effect is utilizing the pomodoro effect where you work 25 minutes at a time or your laser focused, then you take five minutes off so that that way what you're doing, you're really, really focused on getting that much more done. Another shows you just love to talk about, which is one thing I want everyone to listen to. It's really, really important is that every day when I wake up, I visualize my day, meaning I'm I see myself succeeding during the day and I see myself having the proper outcome that I have. I also write down six things that I'm grateful for, like I'm good with my family and grateful for my health. I'm grateful for my energy and my business, whatever it might be. I write specifically write down six things, because the more you focus on what you're grateful for, you'll get more of that. Right? So many times people are so focused on what they're not getting or what's not working, they get more of it right. So you want to write down six things you're grateful for every single day. [00:40:18] I also write down six things that I must do that day. So here's an example of it, right? Looks like this. I write down six things that I absolutely must finish today. Right. And then I put the time that it's going to take me. And usually you want to consider about a 10 hour day. There should be six and a half hours of to dos. The other three and a half hours are for the what ifs, the mishaps, the. Hey, can I have five seconds of your time, which turns into five minutes or two minutes. Right. So I time block six things that I actually want to get done. And then at the end of the day, I write down my wins. What works for me? Right. Celebrate your wins. Celebrate your successes. Success breeds success. The more you focus on what's working and the more you focus on your winning, the more winning you're gonna get. Right. Because your brain is a mental roadmap to get you there. So remember, visualize, show gratitude. Write down your six things time. BLOCK them out at the end of the day. Write down what your success, what your wins, what worked because you'll get more of those and then give yourself permission to sleep and get whatever it is you need to work through for the next day and then start over and start again. [00:41:20] This is amazing. It's like I feel like I'm in old firehose of nothing but solid content that I want to go back and listen to this multiple times. [00:41:30] Lots and lots more notes because in you've been calculated in such a short timeframe, so much amazing value. [00:41:38] Thank you. I appreciate it. [00:41:40] Well, you know, successful people are successful for a reason. [00:41:43] And it's like, you know, if this is how much has come out and just a 30 or 40 minute time, I can just imagine how deep that onion goes if I can just dig deeper. But I know we don't have time for all of that. Let me ask you, so back on the books and contacting you. So can you take a. Help me understand if if I'm going to get the books, because me personally, I want at least two of those books, if not all three of them. How do I get them? Where do I go? What do I do? [00:42:12] So the good news is. So right now, I'm giving away gifts and stuff on your train because I can give a free copy of the free copy of Sell 100 homes a year. But I'd love for you guys to go onto Amazon on Kindle right now. The books are selling their homes as 1999, but a fire and three planes in 30 right now. And they'll both help you in saying that I will guarantee it are 99 cents because we're trying to get as many reviews as possible. So we're giving. E-book for 99 cents. You can get on Amazon, the name Kissimmee Shark. You'll see the three looks come out. And then I'll give a free copy and sell 100 homes e-book that you can generate. Give us your your people. I'll give you that. The code is text in code. And that way I'll get there. Their e-mail address. I could markets in later on and I would just pirate what you did. You guys have been on your own. And then it would be great. But if you can give us a review, I'd really appreciate. I know you're going to get mint. Now you read a chapter or two and then go and give us a review. Of course, we're looking for five star reviews because even four stars people don't think is good enough. [00:43:16] Ok. So so for everyone listening, because you speak really, really fast and you throw it out there. Give me the titles of the three books so someone can what? Write it down. [00:43:27] Ok. Can you on and get it? The one you're going to go to Amazon, you're going to say sell the number one hundred plus homes a year with Kristin. Make sure you'll see my book pop up. Sell a hundred plus homes a year. And the subtitle is How We Use Engage Your Marketing Technology and Lead Gen to sell one hundred plus homes a year every year. So sell one hundred plus homes a year. How we use engagement, marketing, technology and lead gen to sell 100 plus homes a year every year. Here's the deal. So you are thinking, Krista, I don't want to sell a hundred homes. I just want to sell one more home. This will help you. This will help you sell one room a month or 20 homes more a year. You know, it's either or you don't have to sell 100, but you'll definitely get some step by step tangibles, things that you can get. The next book is three clients in 30 days. Three clients in 30 days. This teaches you if you had to start from scratch or if you're doing it, you're in your business right now and you want to. [00:44:24] You need to change what you can start implementing in your business right now to generate more deals. And again, you can get all these on. Amazon is going to go to Amazon. It'll give you a Kindle version or whatever the version that you're looking. It's all there. And then lastly, Fire, which stands for financially independent, retire early. Your crappy job will quit itself. Those three books will be very, very helpful. Definitely sell a hundred home would be my recommendation. First to buy as an aged it then three clients in 30. That fire has a ton of marketing information it teaching you how to market as well. And it will give you a lot of tangible strategies. There's also a lot of goal setting and vision and purpose which we all need. We really need to have our clear vision of why it is we want what we want to get there. Fire walks you through that. We've got a great work book to do it. And you can go to Crystal, make sure dot com to find more about me. And also one more thing. Beauty is, baby, I own saying it wrong. [00:45:23] Baby, baby. Either one works if I'm go back and forth. Katie, is it. Yeah. I'm so sorry. It's fine. I get it all the time. [00:45:32] I like knowing you can go to the seven figure ranger blueprint. The seven figure real tour blueprint on Facebook and read them is me and these seven. [00:45:45] Or is it just seven figure? [00:45:46] It's seven figure. Yeah, the number seven. Leave the off. [00:45:50] Yeah, leave the F seven figure. Real true blueprint. And I do two free trainings every single week on Tuesdays and Thursdays in that group. Writers give value when you serve. [00:46:02] Wonderful. So Krista may sure. M A S H O R E coaching dot com and the Facebook group seven figure real term blueprint. [00:46:15] Those are the two places to contact you get crystal, make sure dot com and then the seven figure world, your blueprint on Facebook and yes, go to Amazon, get our book. It's not just it's I actually really read these books. It's a really step by step how to we tell you everything and we don't hold anything back. So many of the people that are in my program actually read my book and then they thought, that's a lot that's going to hire. [00:46:39] I love it. Well, is there anything this has been really great. Is there anything else that you'd like to share? [00:46:44] Before we close out, just implement. Right. I mean, if I can give you any advice at all is just implement and be consistent. It's so important to be as important as it is to implement as much as you can and be as consistent as possible and keep your mind in check. Right minds. It is such a huge part of success. And I don't think people really get that there is a reason why all these great thought leaders like Napoleon Hill and Dr. Maximal Mall and I can just keep going on and on, speak so much about mindset. You've got to have your mind intact to get your business intact. [00:47:18] You know that execution is as you mentioned, that I've read a book not long ago called The Executioner by businessman named Artie McFerrin. It's it's funny, really written because you can tell it to an older man who just put his thoughts down. But what really struck me is it's all about execution. And he made this calm. He said, you know, if I want to make an extra ten million dollars a year, all I do is these things and I'm thinking an extra 10 million dollars. And this guy is worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. [00:47:50] But the things he said he did. [00:47:54] It's all about execution. And he goes through his top five or six things that he's built his business with over the years. And it's just grown in multiples like like doubling growth almost every year for a number of years. It's just, you know, I was over there taking notes, taking notes and underlying all these things. And, you know, it's not one of these professionally written books like Good to Great, but it's one of these that it's like this guy's giving you his heart. And he's been super, super successful for many years and has more money than he knows what to do with. And he isn't pursuing more money. He wants to leave a legacy. And that's what he wrote all of his secrets with. [00:48:33] I love it. That's great. Yeah. Education everywhere. Educate yourself in order for you to go from good to great. You need to help. I mean, we all do. The only reason why I'm as great as I am is because in my business it's only wrong. But it's because I'm constantly educating myself, trying to become better, hiring people to help me get there. People that excel in something that I don't and I don't give up. Right. Many people give up way too soon. They don't see results right away. We teach in our program. This is not an overnight get rich quick. This is this is we're teaching you a system. We're teaching your community to get to know you. So the first three months is all about getting people to know you like you trust you before you even start. Literally generations. [00:49:14] Yes, deadly. I had one question, I had one. One asked that's on that. How long does it take with a video approach in the Facebook? How long does it take to start seeing traction? [00:49:26] It's about four to six months. OK. If you do it right now for does it we we have some people that do it in two or three. But I'm going to be really real. It's not around the four or five month mark. And we have people in month three saying, I don't see any results. And then month four or five, I like I am hiring an assistant. We're just on fire. We're going crazy. We've we've seen crazy results going from so doing fifteen thousand dollars in commissions to one hundred and twenty four thousand writer going from selling one month selling well, making an extra eight million dollars of production in one year. It's just crazy numbers, but it's from the people that are the most consistent and persistent and give it the time that it takes it takes time. [00:50:08] That's really amazing. Well I could spend a long time. I know you're busy and you got to go, but this has been absolutely wonderful. So, Krista, thank you so much for being on this podcast with us. [00:50:18] Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. You're great. It's so nice that you get a piece of its value in helping everyone, and I appreciate it. We're listening. And hopefully I didn't talk too fast. You can understand that. [00:50:28] Well, the great thing is as a podcast, as you talk to fans, you can replay it and you can actually slow the audio down and do it step by step. [00:50:36] So. Well, for those who are listening, if you do like this podcast, please subscribe to it. Please like it on iTunes and YouTube. [00:50:45] Real quickly, I was going to tell I'm going to be having a podcast. It's called Fire with Krista, Measure on Fire with Krista Mashore it launches in three weeks. But it should be probably on the time this goes on. Absolutely. [00:50:54] On fire with Krista Mashore. [00:50:57] Yes. On fire records. To make sure. I'll be sure to pump up your your your your podcast when I remind start you on fire. Krista May Shores, if you're listening to this, look for us. We're gonna be doing it. The goal was due Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Will that three a week and just help give you some brisk business strategies? [00:51:13] Well, I'm going to plug it into that one for sure. On par with Krista Mashore. So by the time you get this podcast, go grab that one, too. So thanks so much, Krista. And you have a really blessed day. [00:51:25] You, too. You guys make sure you subscribe to and share his podcast. It helps him if you're listening. You want to help him just like he's helping you. [00:51:33] Absolutely. Thank you so much, Krista. Thanks, Beatty. Be blessed if you've enjoyed this podcast. [00:51:40] Be sure to subscribe to it so you never miss another episode. And please, like our get sellers calling you Facebook page. Also, if you want to increase sales from past clients and sphere of influence, dominate a geographic farm or convert home valuation leads. Check out our Agent Dominator program. We create custom content that differentiates you from other realtors, then use it to keep you top of mind with your prospects with postcards, targeted Facebook ads, email campaigns, video interviews and more. And the best part is we guarantee yourselves or give all your money back. Learn more. They get sellers calling you dot com and select agent dominator. [00:52:18] Thanks for listening to the Get Sellers Calling You podcast. Have a great day. P039 [/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Introduction: Proverbs 19:11 - Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense. What is NOT "overlooking"? Getting Even Holding a Grudge Slander How Do I Overlook an Offense? When You Are "Triggered", Ask Yourself: Is there some Truth here? Then I'm just going to overlook the offense. Proverbs 27:6 - Faithful are the wounds of a friend... Luke 11:37 - While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. Is there a chance I Misunderstood what was said? Then I'm just going to overlook the offense. 1 Corinthians 13:7 - Love... believes all things... Am I making a big deal out of a Minor issue? Then I'm just going to overlook the offense. Philippians 4:5 - Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. Is this a Lost person just acting like a Lost lost person? Then I'm just going to overlook the offense. Luke 23:34 - Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Do I Love the offender? Then I'm just going to overlook the offense. Proverbs 10:12 - ...love covers all offenses. Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANKHint: Highlight blanks above for answers! Small Group DiscussionRead Proverbs 19:11What was your big “take-away” from this passage / message?Why do you think people seem so anxious to be offended today?On a scale of 1-10, how easily offended are you? (1 = nothing offends me, 10 = everything offends me)When is it okay to be offended? How do you know when it is appropriate to be offended?How does being “slow to anger” help you overlook offenses?How does the forgiveness of Christ motivate you to overlook offenses?Bonus: What was the craziest thing you’ve ever heard someone be offended over?BREAKOUTPray for one another to grow in being slow to anger and quick to overlook offenses. What kind of a church would HBC be if we all lived by Proverbs 19:11?

Hey everybody, my name is Ben Moote and this is hack that funnel radio. All right, there is a term that is the most misunderstood term in all of marketing, especially online marketing. And I want to talk to you about it right now and so you've gotta be ready for this. There's a lot of terms out there, Kate, I'm sure you've heard about this one. If you're watching me on youtube, you're seeing me. Where it k a this is going out by the way, that youtube is going out to my podcast. It's going out to my blog. It's going couple of different places. All right, so that's really, really cool. So you, wherever you are, you can catch me in multiple different areas. But the question is what does this term like, what does this term that nobody understands and why doesn't anybody understand it? The term ready for this, the term is funnel hacking seeming, I don't know what a funnel hacking is. Look, I've been a funnel hacker for over five years. Then I know what I'm doing. I've been funnel hacking since click funnels was Beta then I don't want funnel hacking is, and I've been, I'm, I'm an, I'm a market, I am a professional. I don't do hacking. I do marketer research. Oh congratulations. Okay. Funnel hacking is the most misunderstood vocabulary word period in the funnel world in marketing world ever. And the reason it's misunderstood is because everyone sees it as the shortcut, which it is, but no one understands why it is the shortcut. Nobody, it, nobody knows how it works. They all just think, oh, I have build a funnel. And that's a funnel hacking. And it's incorrect. And the reason I know this is because I've spent literally the last six years doing this. On June of 2013 on my birthday, I bought my very first product from a funnel and said, what is this? Like a whole system was an automated business online and I was like, oh my gosh, I don't have to create a brick and mortar business in order to free my family myself. I can create an online business and that Aha hat, oh, I can do this, and then took that steps, took the next steps. The next six months I quit my job. After quitting my job. Over the next six months, I fell into Russell Brunson's lap. Literally just started buying everything I could find from this guy and Russell Brunson, the creator of clickfunnels, creator of.com secrets of book expert secrets, a soon to be traffic secrets like he was ingenious. I joined the inner circle. I was doing absolutely every little thing I could to be inside of this and understand how it works. I used all my savings that I had for a business in that in learning, and I said, okay, time to make money. I'm going to put in, I'm going to build out the most perfect funnel anyone's ever seen. This is going to be spectacular. Then I'm going to pay for ads or I'm going to start blogging or I'm going to do something and it's going to get people there and it's all going to work. So I build out my funnel. I built out an affiliate offer on the backend and I started running traffic to it. I run traffic around traffic around traffic, didn't work, and instead of trying to figure out why it wasn't working, I felt like I'd failed. Like I had put so much money and effort and sweat and belief into this idea that this was the thing that was going to make everything work. And I'm an analyst, analyst and now list. I'm an analyst before anything else. And so I looked at the numbers. I knew it wasn't working because the numbers sucked. It hurt and and money was just, I didn't have any more at that point. It was, it was falling apart. I was broke, I was lost. I was confused and I didn't like it, and so what did I do? This funnel game works. I knew it worked. I knew in my heart it worked. I'd gone through all this training. I've gone through all this indoctrination. I'd quit my job. I knew this. So I went and I created another funnel and another funnel and another fall and another fall. I created 15 full product funnels with membership areas, products done, 15 different full products. I can tell you one of the most painful things is hurting so bad that you're willing to do anything and you do anything and it still doesn't provide it and you're left wondering why. So you'd go back and you educate yourself more. You'd go when you try to do more and it still leads you to the same exact issue. I sat down before I got on this, on this journey, and all I wanted when I pictured was I wanted a house for my wife. We'd been married for a year. I wanted that house for my wife. She had it. We had this little perfect idea of what I wanted our house to be like on a hill. Um, had enough square footage. Um, I could have my own little office where I would do stuff and I would work with a team and she could do whatever she wanted to do. I didn't care if she worked. I didn't care what she did, but she was happy in all truth. All I wanted to do was I wanted to provide, cause I now had a job in six to eight months. Okay. And not being a provider was killing me. I grew up in a culture where you are the provider as a husband. You provide, you are the one who responsible to do this. My wife was bringing home more money than I was easily. I wasn't bringing home anything and uh, it was, it was painful. It was beyond painful. Any money that I made, like I, I made oh two sales, one for $7 and one for $297. As an affiliate. I'll tell you that money did not come home. It went back into the system of me trying to make it all work and it never did. So what do you do? Well, I knew how to build funnels. I knew this, I loved it. I was involved. I was, I was, I promised my soul to this. I felt like I had to do something. I was a funnel hacker and so I decided I would jump and I would do this for other people. And a good friend who reached out and told me, Ben, you're not a failure. You don't know how to do this for other people in. A lot of people don't know how to do this from the start though, help them. So, oh, okay. So I went and did that. I didn't even build a funnel. I was so scared of funnels. I didn't build a funnel for myself. I went on upwork and I built out my own little upwork profile and I sold my time on upwork. And at first I was like $7 an hour and things started to work and I started work with a bunch of customers and I build hundreds of funnels. Some of them got some really good five figure results, six figure results. At one point I couldn't tell who was going to win. It was like a 50 50 I had no idea. Just let me help you. We'll take it as far as we can go, and everyone was like, oh my gosh, Ben, you know so much. I'm like, yeah, I built 15 for myself. That didn't go anywhere. I can definitely coach you on how to do not what I did. I did that. I earned minimum wage at worked for two years. Heaven, thank you. And that made something, but it wasn't out of funnels. It was funnel services I fell on, still didn't convert, never converted unless it was somebody else's funnels and they worked 50 50 I learned how to drive traffic. I learned how to write copy other and how to become an amazing clickfunnels designer. I learned all the different types of funnels I learned from an EAC single. I learned from Vick's transits. I learned from Russell Bronson. I learned from Frank Kern. I learned from everybody I could and every, all the dollars I made, I put back into my education because I wanted to make this work. Not so much everybody else. Yes, because that's where I was going. But I wanted this work from he got started. That's why I got into this two years pass, making minimum wage. I had my wife wanting to quit her job and she was turning to me and asking, do you think we can actually do this on your income and this hole in my stomach? I've never felt like if I was, it's really hard to explain. And then for those of you who are, who are watching, you're seeing the pain on my face. For those of you who are listening, I hope you, I hope you've never been there, but there were such moment of despair, like my stomach sunk so low in my heart started to beat so slow. I just wished I was dead. So one of this to work and I said, yes honey, I can make this work. And do you know how, why? I knew I could make that work because I could work 80 hour weeks and I could make it work. [inaudible] I could make this work, I could provide. At that point I had a customer come to me and the customer said, I would really appreciate it, Ben, if you did everything for us. Like, you know how to video edit, you're not a new copy. You know how to do emails, you know how to do everything, you know, to build it all. You know how to integrate it. You know how to do an advanced integration with Zapier and all these different other systems. Why don't you do this for us and we'll pay you a really good salary. And I said, that's fine, but if we're going to do that, I'm not a salary. A really good, um, I wanted to say, I, I still remain a freelancer. Um, I was going to be a freelance. I was going to be my own agency. I was not gonna do that. So I took money as a, as a freelancer agency, we're going to give you this certain amount per month. I was like, okay, cool. But if we're going to do that, I'm going to make sure that you get results. So I'm going to give me like a couple of days to wrap my brain around everything I may not have done right. I didn't say this out loud. Give me, give me a couple minutes to figure out like what I've missed. So I stepped back and I started going through everything. I start listening to frank, I start listening to Russell, I start listening to, uh, Steven Larson at the time. I started listening to everybody. And the thing that stood out that was really funny, I was watching the funnel hacks Webinar again, and we're, we're Russell sells click funnels for nine 97. And uh, as well as, as well as his training course. And I purchase and uh, and I realized he teaches the entire thing is funnel hacking. [inaudible] officially, but I've only been a funnel hacker for a year, but I've been funnel hacking for s five years and I've been in funnels for sex, but I've only been a funnel hacker for a year. And what is the difference? When I was watching the Webinar, I realized, he's telling me I need to go and look at people who are doing it correctly and model them. Stop trusting the customer. No was what works. Quote unquote customer doesn't know. Only the market knows what's working right now. And if I can take what what the market tells me is working and implement that, I can, I can funnel hack like I can, I can make that work. We can add hack, we can copy hack, we can, we can video hack. But you do all these different things. We can make this work modeling without copying. I can do this. And so I came back to them. I said, that's great, but the first month all I'm going to do is funnel hack for you. And they said, Ben, that sounds spectacular. And they, and we put it down, we wrote it all, we signed the contracts and with went, what is funnel hacking? Really? I mean at the end of the day, what is funnel hacking? I got started and I'm like, okay, this is great. I've got money in the bank. This is wonderful. Um, what do I do? Where do you, where do you go to funnel hack? At the time it was in the mortgage industry. Where do I go to funnel hack mortgage industry? How do I find what funnels are working like? I can't just Google it. That's just googling whatever. SEO is the best. It's not googling exactly what's making money. How can I tell if somebody is making money, how could I find that person? How can I do this? It took the first week of just figuring out how to hack, researching, documenting, trying, failing and going over and over trying to figure out how to hack correctly. How do you do funnel hacking? How do you do market research one-on-one for funnels? How do you do it? That was my main question and it took me that first week. The second week I actually started doing it and we started going into different people and modeling what was working and I took all of their systems and I had a white board at the time. I wrote everything on the Whiteboard, everything I possibly could in map got all the possibilities. Week number three, I thought I had a good idea with number four. I went and funnel hacked a little bit more and they came back to them with an idea of how to do the build. That is funnel hike. Now I'm going to tell you what happened is the end result because it blew my socks off. Um, a lot of the times when you launch something, uh, it's, it's the most painful experience. Cause I've talked about with my last 15 launches, right? It's, it's like you are ready to take off for the air, but you usually do a little bit of a hop and skip, but we'll stay on the tarmac and you end up in the mud pit at the end of the track. It's painful and you're like, Gosh, why would I put myself through that again? And so I'm going, please, oh please. Oh please. I've done everything I possibly can to make this successful. Come on, we can do this. And it launched and we were getting leads for dirt cheap off of ads that I had had hacked off of the full funnel that I had funnel hacked. The whole copy of that had copy hacked the systems, the way that people went through it, everything was hacked and it worked for, it's been spectacular. The problem is they worked so well that their system broke, so I literally had to take a step back. We rebuilt their entire system inside of clickfunnels, the entire application to get to get a mortgage. I built the whole thing in clickfunnels and put it through there and I tracked the cost and click funnels. You'll never guess what it was costing less than a hundred dollars to get somebody there. Now you tell me if I can give you somebody who is interested in getting a mortgage. Now it's filled out a full application. Is that worth $100 to you as a real estate agent who, Oh yeah. I know people who spend 150 $300 for one of those leads, like it made sense and I said Hot Dang. Diggity everybody I tell about this, they're all freaking out. I think I didn't did I this then do they actually do this? And so I said, no, there was no way. So I went and I found another customer at the time and the dentist industry and they wanted their funnel and they wanted the ads and they wanted this great. I'm not doing anything for a week. I'm going to funnel hack. They're like, whatever that is great. Go find what's working in, use it. Wonderful. So I went into that and I funnel hacked and I found out what worked and what didn't. And I built it out and we tested and a, the first month I didn't, I didn't know how to funnel hack quite right. So the first month didn't do so great. The second month was spectacular. We get somebody as an applicant in order to get into a, who would apply to get a free cleaning for $40 sometimes 20 and it just blew the industry socks off and it was spectacular. And this customer was like, wow. Um, all right. And so then the next issues come up. How do we follow up? How do we do this? How do we make sure they get in the office, they all the other things that happen outside of the online funnel and it just exploded. I went to my next customer, I did the funnel hack and it worked again. The last year I've been doing nothing but funnel hacking. Before I do anything else, I refuse to do a full on funnel hack. What is a funnel hack? A funnel hack is researching what's working in the industry so that way you don't start at the beginning. You start where successes, you start on what successful is that will you stand on the shoulders of what's already already is working? There is no reason for you to go back and start with science and Algebra when you're trying to figure out quantum physics. It doesn't work. The same is true for anything, especially marketing and that's what funnel hacking is. That's the essence for the last year. I've been funnel hacking correctly and I'll tell you what's changed in my life. I can be paid what I'm worth as a funnel hacker. That means a lot. As a true blue funnel hacker, that means a lot. Okay. Number one, I can charge what I'm worth. Number two, I can get customers results. It's not so much that I get a lot of money. I can then turn that money into profits for the customer and for myself. That is my new goal. We now have our house. My wife isn't working. She's trusted that I'm able to do this because the last year I've proven I can. We now have a lot of dogs. We had a dog and a cat back in the day. Right now we have, uh, we have at least seven dogs and two cats. Um, and then we're fostering dogs constantly. That's what my wife loves to do. She's a dog fostering machine and an animal foster and she works with local rescues and she does spectacular work that I can drop my hat and help her with when I need to, which changes everything because we do that. I now have a dog that is a permanent resident in my room. His name is chicken. Um, he is a little Chihuahua. Yes, I have a dog named chicken. Uh, he's a little Chihuahua and he, uh, he has some sort of doggy autism. I'm not joking. Like he has a really hard time with input and so he lives in my room. Um, I'll see if I can introduce you to him really quick ticket. Nah, he's asleep. That's okay. You'll see him at some point in one of the episodes or hear from him. If you hear something in the background, it's him barking. It's, I try to keep him quiet, but he might be drinking or eating or playing. So the number one thing that's important is not, I can provide there is, and this whole of I can't be somebody. I can't be that person I'm supposed to be. And that's taken care of. Like I can stand on my own two feet and I can provide for my family. This podcast is all about how you turn funnel hacking to work for you because that's what I'm doing now in my business. I've used it for clients, I've helped clients gain massive success. Now it's my turn to use it for myself. And along the way, I'm going to teach you how to funnel hack how it works piece by piece so that when you're not extremely lost, because trust me, it happens. Hey, funnel hacking is a science. It's not an art funnel. Hacking is all about using tools and understanding frameworks in order to model what worked in the past, what worked successfully in the past, not just something that someone built and you found it because you googled click funnels, dentist crawl, click full sentence, Todd, this must work. Somebody built the funnel for it. [inaudible] go. Please don't get a lot of people build funnels, okay? This is the path to making marketing work and especially funnel marketing. So I want to welcome you really quick again on our inaugural podcast. Thank you for being here guys. Over the next couple of podcasts, I'm literally drafting out, uh, something I want to give away to you for free. Okay? So I'll launch that and one of the ones that are coming up. So keep listening and we're going to give you something for free. Um, I'm still building it. Want to make sure it's 100% worthwhile, you're going to get for free. It should definitely be paid for. Um, it's definitely something I should charge, but I'm going to give it to you 100% for free because you know what someone needs to shed light on why funnel hacking isn't just building and how you can do it correctly. That's what I'm here for and that's my goal. So guys, thank you for joining me for this full podcast podcast number two. We'll start eventually as we go. Keep watching. If you're on youtube, subscribe if you're on the podcast, make sure that you subscribe to the podcast so you keep getting that information. Guys, this has been thank you so much for being here and I will see you in the next video. Take care and Bam, thank you for being here. If you like this at all, it would mean so very much. If you could leave a review, whether you're on iTunes, Google play, Spotify, soundcloud, youtube, or wherever you are, leave a quick review and let me know what your favorite story has been. Well, what you've learned, that's been most impactful. It takes less than a minute, and it would literally mean the world. You'll leave a real, a real quick review, and I'll be working on the next episode for you.

Arsenal have smashed their transfer record for the third time in two years, bringing in Nicolas Pepe from Lille. It's a signing that seemed impossible just a week ago, but here he is. Joining me to talk about Pepe the player is Matt Spiro, and we discuss his arrival, the kind of player he is, and more, as well as William Saliba, Laurent Koscielny and Matteo Guendouzi. Then I'm joined by Clive Palmer to delve into the Pepe deal, what it says about us as a club, the message it sends, the impact he'll have on the squad and the way we plays, and loads more besides, including a defensive discussion.Follow Matt @mattspiro and Clive @clivepafc See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this episode of the I Don't Want a Divorce podcast, we've come to the point in this my spouse wants a divorce process where it's time to tell your kids what's going on.   The awful truth is your spouse has decided to divorce you. Your kids need to know the truth. I'm going to share how to tell your children and what to tell them. Then I'm going to share why it's so important to tell them.   If you are in a marital crises, consider my phone advice service. You can talk to me for 45 minutes and I will give you a strategy that will empower you and give you the best chance to save your marriage. My phone advice service is explained on my website or by clicking here. http://davideclarkephd.com/Ask-Dr-Clarke   Follow me on: Instagram @drdavidclarke Twitter @davideclarkephd Facebook @davideclarkephd

ASCO: You’re listening to a podcast from Cancer.Net. This cancer information website is produced by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, known as ASCO, the world’s leading professional organization for doctors who care for people with cancer. 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. Cancer research discussed in this podcast is ongoing, so the data described here may change as research progresses. The 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting, held May 31 to June 4, brought together physicians, researchers, patient advocates, and other health care professionals from around the world to present and discuss the latest research in cancer treatment and patient care. In the annual Research Round Up podcast series, Cancer.Net Associate Editors share their thoughts on the most exciting scientific research to come out of this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting and what it means for patients. First, Dr. Lynn Henry will discuss 3 studies that explored new treatment options for women with breast cancer, including a study on immunotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer and 2 studies on treatment for hormone receptor positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. She also discusses research on the effects of a low-fat diet in women diagnosed with breast cancer, and a study on whether pregnancy after breast cancer increased the risk of recurrence.   Dr. Henry is an Associate Professor and Interim Division Chief of Oncology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Utah and Director of Breast Medical Oncology at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. She is also the Cancer.Net Associate Editor for Breast Cancer. Dr. Henry: Hi. My name is Dr. Lynn Henry. I'm a medical oncologist who specializes in treating breast cancer at the University of Utah. Today, I'm going to discuss research on breast cancer that was presented at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago. In particular, I'm going to focus on the results of some clinical trials that directly impact how oncologists treat patients with breast cancer. First, I'm going to give just a very brief overview of the types of breast cancer and then talk about some research that was presented on triple-negative and hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer. Then I'm going to briefly review findings related to diet and breast cancer as well as pregnancy after breast cancer in women with BRCA mutations. As a quick reminder, there are multiple kinds of breast cancer. Some breast cancers are called hormone-receptor positive or estrogen-receptor positive, and those are stimulated to grow by estrogen. We treat those cancers with anti-estrogen treatments or anti-hormone treatments to block estrogen or lower the estrogen level in the body. Other breast cancers are called HER2-positive. These are often more aggressive cancers. But because they have extra copies of HER2, they often respond to treatments that block HER2. And finally, there are breast cancers that don't have hormone receptors or HER2, and these are called triple-negative breast cancer. So first, I'm going to focus on this type, triple-negative breast cancer. Until recently, most of the time, we treated triple-negative breast cancer with chemotherapy because we hadn't found other drugs that worked very well. There's a new type of drug, however, called immunotherapy that tries to use a patient's immune system to help fight the breast cancer. Early in 2019, the FDA approved a new treatment for triple-negative breast cancer that is a combination of a chemotherapy called Abraxane and a new immune drug called atezolizumab or Tecentriq. The combination increased the length of time until cancer progressed or grew. Overall, the treatment was fairly well tolerated. But we did learn that in order for the treatment to work, the cells surrounding the cancer have to have at least a small amount of a very specific protein called PD-L1. So at this recent ASCO meeting, we heard an update about this treatment. In the trial, the patients whose cancers had the PD-L1 protein and who got the combination treatment lived 7 months longer than those who got just the chemotherapy, which was an increase from 18 months to just over 2 years. This is an important first step towards finding a better treatment for this difficult type of triple-negative breast cancer. And this treatment is currently available to patients. Additional clinical trials are going on now to try to find even better combinations of chemotherapy and immune therapies to treat this type of cancer. So next, I'm going to talk about hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer. There were two trials of this type of cancer that had important results presented at the ASCO meeting. First, I'll focus on the treatment of early-stage node-negative breast cancer that is hormone-receptor positive and HER2 negative. The Oncotype DX test is a test we commonly run on tumors of this type to help determine whether treatment with chemotherapy is likely to be helpful. For this test, if your tumor has a score over 25, then chemotherapy is generally recommended in addition to anti-hormone therapy. If you have a score under 11, then chemotherapy is not recommended and a patient should receive only anti-hormone therapy. But for those with scores between 11 and 25, it was unclear how beneficial it was to receive chemotherapy. Last year, the results of the TAILORx trial were reported. And that showed that for women over the age of 50, if their tumor had a score between 11 and 25, they were not likely to get benefit from chemotherapy. However, it turned out it was a bit more complicated for women aged 50 and under. For those with scores between 11 and 15, chemotherapy was not likely to be beneficial. However, for those who score 16 to 25, chemotherapy might be beneficial. So we got some answers but not everything. At this recent ASCO meeting, additional information was reported to help guide treatment decision making for this middle group of women aged 50 and under. So for women whose scores were at the higher end, 21 to 25, chemotherapy was found to be likely to be beneficial. However, in that middle group, the 16 to 20 group, chemotherapy might be beneficial but generally only for women with higher risk cancers, meaning larger cancers or higher grade. This information is helpful because it provides more information for oncologists and for patients when they are discussing whether or not chemotherapy should be included as part of their treatment. So switching gears a little, still staying with premenopausal women and hormone-receptor-positive HER2-negative cancer, but now thinking about metastatic breast cancer, so cancer that has spread. We now have additional information about treatment with an anti-hormone therapy plus an additional drug called the CDK4/6 inhibitor. We've routinely been recommending this treatment combination because it leads to a longer time before the cancer progresses. But until now, we didn't know if it actually allows women with this type of cancer to live longer. The results of the MONALEESA-7 trial, which looked at the combination of an anti-hormone therapy plus the drug called ribociclib, showed that women who received the combination instead of anti-hormone therapy alone live almost 30% longer. So looking at women 3 and a half years after they started treatment, just over 70% of the women who were treated with ribociclib plus anti-hormone therapy were alive compared to just under half of women treated with anti-hormone therapy alone. So these results reinforce that this is an excellent first approach to treatment of premenopausal women who have newly diagnosed, hormone-receptor-positive HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer. So in addition to studies looking at these specific types of breast cancer, there were 2 other interesting studies that were applicable to breast cancer more generally. So there was a large study that was reported that looked at whether having a low-fat diet reduced the likelihood of developing triple-negative breast cancer. So in this study, postmenopausal without cancer were randomized to either a low-fat diet or their usual diet and followed for many, many years. Over time, some of these women developed breast cancer with no difference between those who followed the low-fat diet or the regular diet. However, in this new report, they looked specifically at the women who developed breast cancer who were enrolled in this trial. Fewer women died from their breast cancer if they ate the low-fat diet, especially if they had preexisting high cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity. These findings suggest that having a low-fat diet may actually reduce the risk of dying overall and also specifically from breast cancer. Now, these need to be validated, and we don't quite understand why this would be the case. But in general, it seems like having a low-fat diet, avoiding high cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity is a good thing. And then finally, 1 question that comes up often is whether it is safe to have a baby after the diagnosis of breast cancer. This is especially concerning for patients who have a mutation in genes called BRCA1 or BRCA2 since those mutations greatly increase their risk of developing both breast and ovarian cancer and also leads to the diagnosis of breast cancer at an early age. In addition, patients with these mutations are often recommended to have their ovaries removed at a young age. So in this study, patients who became pregnant did so about 4 and a half years after they were diagnosed with breast cancer. There was no apparent increase in miscarriage, preterm birth, or birth defects compared to what would be expected in women without cancer. And in the patients, there was no increase in the risk of breast cancer recurrence compared to those who did not become pregnant. And in fact, those who became pregnant were slightly less likely to have their cancer return, especially those who had mutations in BRCA1. So while there are some limitations to the study, the findings are reassuring that there does not appear to be an increase in risk of breast cancer returning in these patients with BRCA mutations who become pregnant after breast cancer diagnosis. So overall, as you can see, there's a lot of exciting research going on across all the different subsets of breast cancer. The results of many important clinical trials were reported at the recent ASCO meeting, and there are many more trials ongoing that will hopefully result in the approval of multiple new effective treatments for breast cancer. In addition, there's research going on examining the impact of treatment on patients with breast cancer and trying to improve the lives of those living with breast cancer. Clinical trials are critical for the development of these new treatments. Well, that's it for this quick summary of this important research from ASCO 2019. Overall, we continue on a fast track in breast cancer, with many new and exciting therapies being actively studied and research helping support our patients do better than ever before. Stay tuned to Cancer.Net for future updates from upcoming breast cancer conferences. Thank you very much. ASCO: Thank you, Dr. Henry. Next, Dr. Ezra Cohen will discuss several studies that looked at using immunotherapy and targeted therapy to treat different types of head and neck cancer. Dr. Cohen is Associate Director of Translational Science and leads the Solid Tumor Therapeutics research program at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health. He is the Cancer.Net Associate Editor for Head and Neck Cancer. Dr. Cohen: Hi. I'm Dr. Ezra Cohen from UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. Today, I'm going to talk about research on head and neck cancer that was presented at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting. I think the most impactful presentation at the meeting was a follow-up on the KEYNOTE-048 study, which implemented the drug pembrolizumab, an anti-PD-1 antibody in first-line recurrent metastatic head and neck cancer. These were patients who were treated with curative intent or presented with metastatic disease, and either way, either had recurrence or eventually developed metastases. The first-line standard of care for these patients used to be the so-called extreme regimen, which involved platinum, 5-FU, and cetuximab. This was validated in an earlier phase III study that was conducted about 10 years ago and was the approved first-line regimen for these patients. In KEYNOTE-048, this extreme regimen was tested against either pembrolizumab alone or pembrolizumab, platinum, and 5-FU, in other words, substituting cetuximab for pembrolizumab in one of the experimental arms. We'd initially seen the interim analysis data at last year's ESMO meeting, but this year, we have the final analysis presented at ASCO. And what we saw was that both experimental arms actually achieved an improvement in overall survival compared to the extreme regimen. Interestingly, for pembrolizumab alone, this occurred in patients whose tumors expressed some level of PD-L1. That was evaluated by something called the composite score and takes into account both stromal and tumor cell staining of PD-L1. In fact, even at a very low level—that is CPS greater than or equal to 1—pembrolizumab monotherapy was superior to the extreme regimen with respect to overall survival. For all patients, the regimen of pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy was superior to the extreme regimen irrespective of PD-L1 staining. What we saw at this year's ASCO meeting was that, in fact, first, the higher the expression of PD-L1, the greater the benefit one derived from pembrolizumab either as monotherapy or in combination with chemotherapy. And in patients who had higher levels of PD-L1 and received both pembrolizumab and chemotherapy, the overall survival was quite remarkable with a hazard ratio of just higher than 0.6. In fact, we now have FDA approval in the United States for pembrolizumab monotherapy with tumors that have some expression level of PD-L1—that is CPS greater than or equal to one—or for all comers in patients who either the CPS status is unknown or patients whose tumors don't express PD-L1. Beyond KEYNOTE-048, we saw interesting data in first-line recurrent metastatic using a regimen of taxane, platinum, and 5-FU compared to the same extreme regimen that we just mentioned. That regimen turned out to be much better tolerated with fewer adverse events but with no improvement in overall survival, giving us a regimen that we could substitute for the extreme regimen if one wanted to, realizing that it does not involve immunotherapy, and for some patients, this may still be an appropriate treatment. Beyond the first-line recurrent metastatic studies, we saw a few interesting trials looking at targeted therapy in head and neck cancer but specific subsets. The first was in patients whose tumors expressed HER2 at very high levels—that is HER2 amplified—and had salivary ductal carcinoma. We've known that a proportion of salivary ductal carcinoma patients' tumors amplify this gene, HER2, similar to breast cancer and some other malignancies and that trastuzumab may, in fact, be effective. Well, in this study conducted by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Group, an antibody-drug conjugate trastuzumab emtansine was employed as a single agent in these patients whose, again, tumors amplified HER2. And what they saw was a remarkable 90% response rate. Now, this was only in 10 patients, so the study is small, but I think it's safe to say that this drug appears to be quite effective in patients with HER2-amplified salivary ductal carcinoma. Along those lines, in the subset of thyroid cancer patients whose tumors either mutate or have a RET fusion, the gene RET, there appeared to be very high efficacy for a novel agent that targets the RET oncogene. This was in both patients with medullary thyroid cancers that often have a RET mutation or in papillary thyroid cancers whose tumors often have a fusion of the same RET gene. Again, underscoring the idea that if we can target a driver even in a relatively small subset of patients, the benefit may be quite large. Along those lines, we had seen prior data for track inhibitors in patients who have in track fusions. And again, this applies to subsets of head and neck cancer patients that have either salivary gland cancers or thyroid cancers. Lastly, we continue to see emerging promising data of combinations with immunotherapy, and 2 highlights from ASCO were pembrolizumab with cetuximab showing a response rate of over 40% in a small group of patients and pembrolizumab with a TLR9 agonist called SD-101 showing about a 30% response rate. Of course, these data are very early and uncontrolled, and so we have to follow these stories further along to see if, indeed, these early signs of efficacy turn out to validate. But the idea that further combinations of immunotherapies eventually making their way to larger studies and hopefully approval is now well enforced in head and neck cancer. Thank you very much for your attention and hope you enjoyed the ASCO 2019 Annual Meeting. ASCO: Thank you Dr. Cohen. Next, Dr. Charles Loprinzi will discuss new research on ways to prevent or treat nausea and vomiting caused by cancer treatment. Dr. Loprinzi is a medical oncologist and the Regis Professor of Breast Cancer Research at the Mayo Clinic. He is also the Cancer.Net Associate Editor for Psychosocial Oncology. Dr. Loprinzi: Hello, I'm Charles Loprinzi, Regis Professor of Breast Cancer Research at Mayo Clinic. I'm going to be talking today about chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. Now, chemotherapy can cause a lot of nausea and vomiting. That's well known, for years and years, by many people. It's not all types of chemotherapy, but some chemotherapy drugs cause a lot of nausea and vomiting, and others cause little to none. It's not as big a problem now as it was decades ago when we didn't have good drugs to try to prevent nausea and vomiting. Many drugs over the time have been developed for trying to prevent this nausea and vomiting problem. Examples of the drugs that cause a lot of nausea and vomiting are Cisplatinum, and Adriamycin and cyclophosphamide is a combination that is oftentimes used for patients with breast cancer. So in the past, we have developed many, many drugs for this. Three of the drugs that have commonly been used for the last many, many years for treatment or prevention of nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy are corticosteroid medications like Dexamethasone. It's quite cheap. It's got some side effects, but relatively cheap. Then there's a group called 5-HT3 receptor antagonists. I didn't make up that name, but that's the long name for it. They're relatively expensive, some more expensive than other ones. And then there's another group called NK1 receptor antagonists, and they can be quite expensive, sometimes being hundreds of dollars for each dose that's given to try to prevent nausea and vomiting related to chemotherapy. So a couple years ago, 2016, there was a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, which is a prominent journal for us in the business, that looked at a drug called olanzapine. It's a relatively cheap drug. It's a drug that was developed for psychosis-type problems, given for long term in those patients. But it had been noted that if it's given for just a few days, it seems to markedly improve or decrease the instance of nausea and vomiting, or if people were having nausea and vomiting, it appears actually to help and reverse that particular problem. So this trial looked at 10 milligrams of this drug for 4 days, given before chemotherapy, and then for 3 more days after that. Patients who were on this study got the 3 drugs that I talked about before with the olanzapine or with the placebo. And it noted that it improved things by quite a bit. The patients who had what we call a complete response, which means no vomiting and no need to take extra medications because of nausea and vomiting, improved from 41% of the patients who were on the placebo, to 64% who were on the olanzapine, a 23% improvement. And if we looked at a different endpoint there, the number of patients who had no nausea during the five days after chemotherapy, it was 22% in the group that got the placebo and improved to 37% in the group that didn't. So it was a good result in that area. One of the problems with this drug is that it can cause some sedation, cause some drowsiness for some patients. Most patients, not much, but some patients, it's a problem. So most trials that have been done in the past use this 10-milligram dose. And what we learned at ASCO in 2019, our main meeting that we have once a year, was that people looked at a 5-milligram dose and had looked at 5 milligrams instead of the 10 milligrams. And what it showed is that the results seemed to be quite similar to what was seen with 10 milligrams. They did the study quite the same as what had been reported in the previous trial and the results looks similar. They didn't compare 5 milligrams versus 10 milligrams, which would've been nice because then we would have better information along that line. They did note that there was drowsiness that some patients had, and it looks similar to what was seen with the 10-milligram dose. But these data support, but don't prove, that giving 5 milligrams does look like it's good in this particular setting. So data from this year also supported that instead of giving the drug during the day when getting the chemotherapy, sometimes, people take it at bedtime, and there, the drowsiness is not as big a problem because you want to be drowsy at bedtime. So it's not proven that it works as well at bedtime, but it suggests that that actually is the case. Data from this year also supported that if you looked at those 3 drugs I mentioned before and just took out that 1 really, really expensive one, the NK1 receptor antagonist, and put the olanzapine in there instead, that very cheap medication, that that looked like that one with the olanzapine did better than the very expensive one. Not a whole lot better; they looked similar, but a little bit better in that setting, and it was a whole lot cheaper. This was also seen in a publication that came out a couple of years ago which showed the same sort of result. Again, not proof that it's beneficial, that it's okay to do that, but it looked better. So the next obvious question that comes up then is when you have these 4 drugs that you give, the 3 drugs I mentioned before and this fourth one, what about if you take away that more expensive one and see how they do there? So there was a trial at the ASCO meeting that suggested that the addition of that expensive medications didn't provide a whole lot more benefit. Right now, there is a trial going on across the United States, with about 800 patients who are scheduled to go on this trial, and it's approving about 30 patients a month, which is a pretty good accrual rate, which is looking at this particular question where people would get the 4-drug regimen versus 3 drugs where they take away the expensive intravenous medication. So, in summary, 35 to 40 years ago, when I started my cancer career, when I was about 10 years old, most patients had a lot a trouble with nausea and vomiting with drugs like Cisplatinum. Now, this a minority of patients who have a lot of problems, and we're continuing to find new things that will make things better along this line. Thank you for your attention. ASCO: Thank you Dr. Loprinzi. Learn more about these topics and other research presented at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting at www.cancer.net. If this podcast was useful, please take a minute to subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Google Play. And stay tuned for additional Research Round Up podcasts coming later this summer. Cancer.Net is supported by Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation, which funds breakthrough research for every type of cancer, helping patients everywhere. To help fund Cancer.Net and programs like it, donate at conquer.org/support.

An old story - everybody has one. Typically old stories are framed by absolutes - "I never..." or "I always..." or "I'm not someone who..." But we have the power to change our actions, and in doing so change our stories. I want to change the story about myself that I'm not adventurous; I don't travel. I'm broadcasting this episode from Italy where I am in the midst of an adventure - an impromptu trip sparked by a friend who was traveling here for a conference. By booking the flight (and showing up for it) I changed my mind about myself. I am a woman who travels and has adventures - I'm not just work, work, work. But you can change any behavior, and the associated identity that goes with it. So what do you want to change? Pick one negative thing you say about yourself - i.e. "I'm not a person who works out..." and then book something - a training session or pilates class - that refutes that idea. )I've found that if I spend money, I'm less likely to flake out). I'm going to spend some time on this trip making a list of traits I wish I embodied. Then I'm going to sign up for one thing in each category so I can be on the road to being who I really want to be. Feel free to hold me to it.

Having a mission statement for your family isn't required but it can be very beneficial for creating and maintaining the culture of your home. Jennifer and I have never created a mission statement before so we thought we would make one while you listen. If you have been blessed by the Marriage After God podcast please consider supporting it by picking up a copy of our book titled Marriage After God. https://marrigeaftergod.com READ TRANSCRIPT [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with "Marriage After God". [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're gonna do something fun and we're gonna talk about creating a family mission statement. Welcome to the "Marriage After God" podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just "Happily Ever After". [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as "Unveiled Wife". [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as "Husband Revolution". [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years, through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one full of life. [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is "Marriage After God". Firstly, we want to just thank everyone for joining us on this podcast today. We're super excited just to have you join us 'cause this is gonna be an interesting episode. We have a lot in store for you, but first we just wanna ask that you would take a minute to leave us a review. It's easy, you just scroll to the bottom of the app and just leave us a star rating review or comment review. This is one way to support the podcast "Marriage After God" because it allows other people to find the podcast, and we wanna do that. So, please take a moment to help us out there and thank you. [Aaron] Also, our book's out. Our new book, "Marriage After God", is available. It's been such and awesome ride seeing the response we've been getting, and if you have not picked up a copy yet, we'd love for you to go to shop.marriageaftergod.com, and pick up a copy today. One of the most powerful ways you can support us, is by buying our book, and it also supports your marriage and your life. We wrote the book for you. We wrote it to encourage you in the ministry that God has for you and your spouse, so go grab a copy today. [Jennifer] Okay, so we are going to start off here with an ice-breaker question, and Aaron came up with this question, so I'm hoping he has an answer. What is the ideal family trip or vacation? [Aaron] I actually didn't think about it when I said it, so I don't have... Okay, let me think. Ideal family trip. So, I can look back on something we have done that I really enjoyed, when we went to the East Coast, but we did like a plane-drive, plane-drive. [Jennifer] It was over a period of a week and a half, two weeks. [Aaron] Yeah, and I thought that was a lot of fun 'cause we got to fly the portions that I thought would've been boring, maybe. Get to a new area and then drive around, stay for a day or two, go to the next place-- [Jennifer] And here, you said, "Ideal family trip". That doesn't sound ideal for any family. [Aaron] For me! Oh, are you saying ideal for everyone? [Jennifer] Yeah, I don't know if that was your question, but I'm just thinking everyone listening right now is probably shaking their heads, no. [Aaron] I thought that was a fun trip for us. [Jennifer] I think the majority of families, especially with young children, would say flying and driving multiple times in one trip would be a difficult challenge. [Aaron] Okay, I didn't know it "ideal for everyone". Ideal for everyone would be like, going somewhere awesome and staying there for a while. Like, with a house that's comfortable and you have all your family with you, and there's a pool or a beach. [Jennifer] Where would that place be, Aaron? [Aaron] Maui? I don't know. [Jennifer] Awesome. [Aaron] What's ideal for you? What would that be? [Jennifer] So, I think you and me just like adventure because I really had fun that time too, that we went to the East Coast, but I think an ideal family trip is visiting family in California. I think that's just because I know it's something the kids enjoy. We usually hit up the beach. We stay there all day. [Aaron] Yeah, that is fun. [Jennifer] I think it's just an easy, kind of, go-to is when you're visiting family somewhere, you're staying with them, and you're just doing something simple. [Aaron] All right, that's good answer. [Jennifer] Relaxing. [Aaron] I'm sure everyone listening has their own ideal. Like, staying home. Eating ice cream, that sounds ideal. [Jennifer] Now that it's summertime, I'm sure there's a lot of people traveling and doing, you know, maybe family vacations or summer trips. [Aaron] Camping. So, we hope you guys are, and we hope that if you can spend that time with your family and doing something fun, even if it's local, like camping in the backyard, you're doing it, 'cause those are memories that your kids will love forever. [Aaron] Oh yeah. So, I just wanna, before we get into the main topic, I'm gonna read a quote from the book "Marriage After God", and it's about this idea. It's from Chapter 13 of "Marriage After God". [Jennifer] About what idea? Just that you clarify. [Aaron] Yeah, it's about the idea of creating a vision statement or mission statement for your marriage. It says this, "Casting a vision together for the future "of your marriage is an intimate experience "where hope for the future "stimulates perseverance for today." What's awesome about that is, when we create a vision for the future, it doesn't mean we're necessarily planning to the "T" everything that's going to happen in the future, it's just saying like, "This is where we'd like to be." [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] "This is what, you know, "the trajectory we want to be on as a family." It helps in those moments when it's tedious; when it's hard; when you're going through something and you say, "Well, we're in this together. "We're going the same direction. "We know where we wanna be, and even if we never get "to that exact point in time, or ideal situation, "we're going there together." [Jennifer] Yeah, and in Chapter 13 of "Marriage After God" we really, you know, drive home this idea that this is an intimate experience that you guys get to do together, and it's something to look forward to casting a vision together and having hope for your marriage and hope for your future together and for your family. This is something that we've kept as a valuable thing in our marriage for years, and I enjoy it. I enjoy the process with you, and so even though in "Marriage After God" we don't strictly talk about creating a family mission statement, we do talk about casting a vision together. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] And in the back of "Marriage After God" we even list some questions for you to sit down and have one of those date-night conversations and be mindful of the next five years, the next 25 years and what that looks like, because when we look to the future of things, there is hope there. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] I think that's important. [Aaron] And we have, like you said, we've always cast vision, planned for the next 60 days, next six months, next year, five years. [Jennifer] We kinda do seasons. [Aaron] We do seasons of that, but we've never sat down and actually wrote down a family vision statement. [Jennifer] Yeah, so even thought we kind of operate out of this same understanding, we've never sat down to do it, and it was actually because of the "Marriage After God" podcast series, which if you guys haven't checked that out, we've been going through-- [Aaron] Yeah just-- [Jennifer] Yeah, 16, 17 episodes about this idea of 'Marriage After God' but several people who we interviewed brought up this idea of creating a family mission statement, and how it has impacted their marriage. I know people share about it online too. So, we just kinda wanted to use this time to, first, encourage you guys in your marriage. [Aaron] Mm-hmm. [Jennifer] Encourage you guys to have hope for the future as you vision plan together, but even more so create a family mission statement. That's our challenge for you at the end of this episode and because Aaron and I have never officially done this before or wrote it down, we thought it would be fun to-- [Aaron] We're gonna do it with you. [Jennifer] Do it with you, so-- [Aaron] We're just gonna start talkin' about it in this podcast episode, and we're gonna start coming up with kinda the foundational ideas for our own mission statement. [Jennifer] This was an idea that I had after having those interviews and being encouraged by people because I thought, "So often we hear people say, "'We did this thing. "'We created this family mission statement "'and here it is, or it's still a work in progress.'" [Aaron] That sounds wonderful. Good for them. [Jennifer] That's awesome, but where's the example of doing it? Which I don't know if everybody needs an example of that but sometimes it's helpful to go, what does that actually look like in a conversation? [Aaron] Yeah, how do you have that conversation with you spouse? I feel like every time a couple that we interviewed brought it up, we looked at each other and we're like, "We need to do that!" We wave our hands like, yeah, we just need to do that. [Jennifer] So, the unique part of this episode today is actually that we're gonna be jumping in here in a bit to kind of experience it with you guys. This is like a behind the scenes kind of-- [Aaron] We have not talked about this before recording this. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, you'll hear the candid conversation about how we see our family, where we see we're gonna go, yeah. So, you're gonna join us on this little adventure with us. [Jennifer] Okay, so-- [Aaron] Before we start, why don't you read that quote from "Seven Habits of a Highly Effective Family" by Stephen Covey. [Jennifer] Okay. [Aaron] 'Cause it's in his whole book about creating a mission statement. [Jennifer] So, I will let you guys know that we actually haven't read this book, but I just jumped on really quick and I typed in Google and said, "family mission statement". [Aaron] This is a part of the process. [Jennifer] Yeah, I encourage you guys to do that too. So, we haven't read this book. We probably will in the future, but there was several people who were quoting this from his book, and it says, "A family mission statement "is a combined unified expression from all family members "of what your family is all about, "what it is you really want to do and be, "and the principles you choose to govern your family life." [Aaron] That's cool, and that's essentially what we're doing. We're not doing it with our kids this time. Our kids are, I think, too young. They'll eventually get older and then what we'll do is we'll probably sit down with them and invite them in and we'll adjust 'cause maybe our kids will have other perspectives they wanna bring in. I know that we have families that they have large families, lots of kids, and they bring their kids in, their older kids, and invite 'em to be a part of this vision planning and mission statement. [Jennifer] So, two things, since we're being candid here. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] The first one being, I don't think our children are too small to be incorporated, even at this stage of the game because it's not finalized yet, right? [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] This is our initial go at it. And so I think-- [Aaron] And Elliott is pretty smart. [Jennifer] Yeah, Elliott's smart. [Aaron] He'll be like, "Why don't we..." [Jennifer] But I think... Okay, so our kids are six and a half, four, two, and eight months. So obviously, Truit's not gonna say much. [Aaron] I don't know. [Jennifer] But having a family fun meeting, where we're saying, "Okay guys, here are some questions "mommy and daddy have for you", and getting them involved. Maybe even if some of the questions are over their head, it'll still be a fun time to spend together and maybe we'll be surprised." [Aaron] Let's write down the funny answers and then we'll keep those for the future and say, "This is what you said when you were four." [Jennifer] Maybe we'll be surprised by them. [Aaron] That's probably true. [Jennifer] So, I do-- [Aaron] I concede. [Jennifer] The second thing is I wanna encourage those listening, if you do have children, that you do find a way to incorporate them in this process because they are a part of the family; and if you're doing it and you don't have kids yet, that's okay too. You and your spouse-- [Aaron] And I guess it's gonna give them more ownership and be like, "Hey, you are members of this family, "not just people that are in it." [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] "You're part of it." [Jennifer] Yeah, and I think what I've gathered from trying to understand this family mission statement saying, is that it's not something that is like, "here are the rules", you know. It's more of something that's supposed to encourage the family unit to be in agreeance and have the same understanding of what those family core values are. So, even though this quote up here says "to govern your family life", I think there's freedom in that. It's not like a list of rules, but it's something creative, a creative way to establish standards and core values. [Aaron] Okay. So, should we do it? [Jennifer] I think we should jump in, yeah. [Aaron] Should we start working on this? I know our kids aren't here but we're gonna start at least with the foundational stuff, maybe? [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Answer some questions. [Jennifer] And just again to preface, this is not something that's... There's not a final answer to. We're kinda just jumping in to show you guys how the conversation could go. [Aaron] Well, it's gonna go. [Jennifer] Well, it's gonna go. This is it. [Aaron] This is our legitimate conversation that we're gonna talk about our mission statement as a family. [Jennifer] Okay. You might hear keyboard typing 'cause I'm taking notes. That's how I'm doin' it. [Aaron] Yeah, so you have a question there, but I guess I wanna start with the first one. I know we kind of hit it up, but when you hear "mission statement"... 'Cause I'm sure everyone has their own little definition of it, and you even had to Google it, like, "What's everyone do?" Everyone's got a little different take on it. When you think mission statement, what do you think? Like, is this our one word phrase or few words phrase? Like, when we are out and about we say, "This is who we are!" [Jennifer] Yeah, we get t-shirts made, right? [Aaron] Yeah, we can get some t-shirts made. [Jennifer] That's not a bad idea. The word that comes to my mind is it's a motto. It's a way of being. It's a way of doing life together, and I do think it is something that should be shortened and concise so that it's easy to remember. [Aaron] I agree. [Jennifer] There might be portions of it that are expanded upon, but I think it should be something that is easy to remember. [Aaron] Okay, it's almost like a statement of faith on our website [Jennifer] Exactly! [Aaron] It's like, "This is what we believe, "this is who we are." [Jennifer] Exactly. [Aaron] Yeah, and this is how we're gonna live. Of course, because we're believers and we love the Lord and we love the Bible, that's probably gonna be a big part of this. [Jennifer] Well, yeah. I would assume that Christians who create a family mission statement, it's built upon the Word. [Aaron] Right. Okay, so we're gonna have to have some verses and we'll get to that probably. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, here's the first question. What are some words that describe our family or what we want our family to be? [Jennifer] Hmm. [Aaron] I'm just gonna throw out the first thing-- [Jennifer] Okay, go. [Aaron] I thought of is generous. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] And for those listening, a lot of the things we're gonna say, because we kind of have just walked in certain things over the last 12 years that we've been married and even before then. I think there's just gonna be some natural things that come out of us. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But now it's gonna be solidified as, "This is who we are." So, generosity is something I believe has been a mark of our marriage for a long time. [Jennifer] I like that. A word that comes to my mind is, I think I already said it, but "adventurous". Meaning that we find the fun in things. [Aaron] Write that down, "we find the fun in thing", 'cause there could be lot's of different "adventurous." Adventurous like, we like to take financial risks. Or adventurous like-- [Jennifer] No, more like, we do fun things. [Aaron] Okay, that's a different kind of adventur-- [Jennifer] We like to explore. We like to eat. We like to go-- [Aaron] We love change. [Jennifer] We love change. [Aaron] Not too much change but we like new environments. We like-- [Jennifer] Yeah, I would say, not change so much to our rhythms and routines, because those are important but more so just experiential. I don't know how to explain it. [Aaron] Like new environments. [Jennifer] New environments. [Aaron] It goes into the adventurous side of... We like to go to new places. We like to be around new people. [Jennifer] I don't know if we've shared this before but we've kind of done these Saturday adventure days with the kids throughout the summer time. [Aaron] Mm-hmm. [Jennifer] 'Cause we go through seasons where it's just easier. [Aaron] We did a podcast about the adventure days. [Jennifer] Okay. So, that's an important thing. When I think of adventure, I think time set aside where we know we're gonna be doing something with the kids, whether it's local or maybe a-- [Aaron] Out of the norm. So, like, we have our normal flow. We have our normal rhythm, and then we're gonna go do something 'not'. [Jennifer] Go on a hike. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Go look at the river. Go whatever it is. [Aaron] Go for a long drive to a new place through a rose garden or apples. [Jennifer] I do, I make... You guys don't know this about me. I make Aaron go out of his way for me all the time because-- [Aaron] She's like, "I found this orchard "on the other side of the mountain. "Can we go?" And then like, it's not open or... I'm just kidding. No, we've actually had a lot of cool adventures just 'cause you Google and find a cool place to go see. [Jennifer] Yeah, even like, we were in Portland this time last year. I remember it was hot and only Elliot was awake, the other kids were napping. I was like, "Will you just pull over and let me go see "the rose garden? "I've been wanting to see it." You know, but it was a fun little detour and it worked out for everyone. I like that kind of stuff. [Aaron] So, adventurous in the fun kind of way, in the environmental kind of way, the experiential kind of way. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] I would say another word I think of is community. [Jennifer] Mmm. [Aaron] I know it's like an easy buzz word for Christians. [Jennifer] No, it's good. [Aaron] We've made big decisions in our life and one of the main criteria in that decision was community. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Often. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] When moving, our prayer was, "Well, we can't move until something changes "in our community because we have these relationships, "we have these connections. "God has us here." [Jennifer] So, being loyal. [Aaron] Yeah, I like that word, loyal. We walk with people and we don't just say, "Well, "they'll get over it, we're gonna move on "and find new friends." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Not that we've been perfect at this, but community's been a huge part of how we make decisions. Even now we think, "If we ever had to move, "who's are we gonna convince to move with us?" And it's not that we don't like being... Like we couldn't do it on our own. We know that community is so important and we want to take it with us. [Jennifer] Yeah. So, I would say a part of that is also walking in light, and we've done this time and time again where it's just being transparent, being able to communicate-- [Aaron] Oh, put that word, that's a good word, transparent. [Jennifer] Okay. [Aaron] I guess it is tied to community, but it's transparent in other things too 'cause our online communities we are transparent with and we don't know any of them. [Jennifer] If nobody knows what he's talking about, we have these online communities who are amazing people. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Who have been following us [Aaron] Facebook, Instagram. [Jennifer] For eight years now. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] It's so awesome. [Aaron] Yeah. So, we try and be the same person to every person we meet. Would that be like-- [Jennifer] Integrity? [Aaron] Integrity. [Jennifer] I like that. [Aaron] I don't know if that's in-Integrity's like being the same person when no one's around. Right? [Jennifer] But also when different people are around. It's all the time. [Aaron] Right, okay. Say like, I'm not showing this person that face, and then that person this face. [Jennifer] I only show you different faces. [Aaron] Okay. [Jennifer] I used to have to work on this. [Aaron] Showing me like... I'd be like, "Why do you give everyone the 'good' face?" And then when you get home I get that face. [Jennifer] Yeah, you said, "I want the best of you." [Aaron] Yeah, that was-- [Jennifer] 'cause I had a problem with showing you too much-- [Aaron] Well, I think it's normal. Just as a little tangent. It's easy to let down the face you have on for everyone else, when you're around the person you know loves you. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But we should really say, "No, I'm actually gonna work harder to give the best "to my closest neighbor, my spouse." It doesn't mean we give the worst to our other neighbors. [Jennifer] Everybody else. [Aaron] Yeah, I guess it's just-- [Jennifer] I needed balance in my life when it came to that. [Aaron] Yeah, it's learning how to be real. Like, when you're around someone, you could at least be real and say, "I'm not feeling good right now" or "I'm not"... Anyways, that was a tangent. So, transparent, I like. That's a good word. That's something that's always been, we've always prided ourselves in... I don't wanna say "prided ourselves". Just being transparent. Not wanting to hide things, be open. Integrity is a good word. So, I think community, transparency, generous, let's think... [Jennifer] I would say faithfulness to our Christian walk, to being obedient to God's Word. Our faith is foundational. [Aaron] I like faithfulness though as the word, because it's easy to say faith. Faith's important, but faithfulness means to our faith and to the Word, and to God. [Jennifer] It's like active. [Aaron] Yeah, it's like a movement word. Is that a verb? It's an action word. What are some... I feel like there's other words that we often say. [Jennifer] Just real quick as a side note to those listening. [Aaron] Extraordinary. I just wanted to say before I forgot it. [Jennifer] Okay. That's fine. [Aaron] Extraordinary is a big word for us. [Jennifer] Yes. Do you wanna explain why? [Aaron] Well, we talk about it a lot in the book "Marriage After God". [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] But it's this idea that we've always had a heart to not just be normal. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] And that doesn't mean that our goal was to be special and like how we wanted to have this... 'Cause starting this ministry online wasn't even an idea in our hearts when we first got married, but our idea was like, "Well, let's just do what God wants "and that's going to be extraordinary." [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] We went to the mission field for a while and then we went to Canada, and we went to Florida, and we did all these different little things. [Jennifer] I can actually see how even smaller decisions in our life, like buying this house, that wasn't a small decision, but-- [Aaron] It was at-- [Jennifer] But I just think of decisions that we've made together and we've even out-loud said to ourselves, "Well, that's extraordinary", or "That's not the normal way!" [Aaron] Right, well we could do the ordinary or we could do it the extraordinary way. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] And the reason you brought up this house, for those that don't know, they can actually find a YouTube video about us doing the house process. We bought a, I wanna say a fixer-upper. [Jennifer] Decrepit. [Aaron] But it was a beater-upper. It was really bad. We had to tear down most of the house to fix it back up, but when we thought about it we were like, "Well, this is how we're gonna get what we can afford." [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] "And then we can make it ours." Which, lot's of people do that, but it was extraordinary in my mind. So, extraordinary is a good word for us. [Jennifer] Yeah. So, when you paused back there I was just gonna note that that's okay when you're doing this process together. There's gonna be times when something might be on your heart or right at the tip of your tongue, and you don't know how to explain it. I think that's why the majority of people will say, "You don't just sit down and write a mission statement. "It's a process, and the process is what counts. "The process is the important part "because you're actually communicating with each other "on what matters most to you." [Aaron] Good tip. [Jennifer] Yeah. So, you just mull it over and come back to the drawing board over and over and over again until you narrow it down. [Aaron] Yeah, and I think after we go through this, we'll be able to see these words and think of better words. [Jennifer] Probably. Or use the good old dictionary! [Aaron] Or just the thesaurus. [Jennifer] Thanks, Google. [Aaron] Thesaurus. [Jennifer] Okay, so are there any phrases that we repeat often or say? [Aaron] Yeah, there's a-- [Jennifer] I know one! Go ahead, what were you gonna say? [Aaron] We do hard things. [Jennifer] Yes! That was what I was gonna say! [Aaron] That was... But you know what? That's a phrase that we only started saying when our kids started getting older. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But-- [Jennifer] To encourage them we would say things "We're the Smiths and we do hard things." [Aaron] And so they own it, and they say, "Oh, okay. "This thing that I said is hard, we do those things." [Jennifer] Yeah. What's cool is they've recognized when we're doing Bible time, certain stories in the Bible of people doing hard things they'll recognize and go, "Hey, David does hard things!" [Aaron] Yeah! So, I think "We do hard things" is a important phrase, and we didn't come up with that of course. [Jennifer] But we use it. [Aaron] We use it often. [Jennifer] I don't know where it came from. [Aaron] And it doesn't just remind our kids, it reminds us because how many times a day do we get to this point of like, "Ugh, I don't wanna do this right now." And they're like, "Ugh, we do hard things." [Jennifer] It's the fight against the flesh. [Aaron] Yeah, we just did our lawns for the first time this season, and I just kept wanting to quit. I was like, "I did enough. Next week I'll finish the weeds." And I'm like . And then I go through and I'm like, "Oh, I'm just gonna go "a little bit further and make this look nice. Then I'm like, "Ugh, I just wanna give up." And then I go a little bit further, and I just kept telling myself, "No, I can finish this. "It's like my first time ever doing this, I should be fine." [Jennifer] That same conversation happens to me every single time I go to work out. It's like, you have ten squats on the list to do and you get through four and you're like, "Ahh!" [Aaron] "I should be able to do this." [Jennifer] "Okay, I'll do one more." And then you want to bail out but then you just keep going, you keep going, you keep going. [Aaron] I think it's a good phrase. What's another phrase that we say? Oh, it's kind of a word but we use it as a phrase. [Jennifer] What? [Aaron] "Gotta have self-control." [Jennifer] Oh, self-control. [Aaron] So, it's a word but-- [Jennifer] Self-control. [Aaron] We use it in a sense that we say it probably a million and a half times a day to our kids. "Are you having self-control? "You need to have self-control. "Remember self-control!" [Jennifer] We say it to each other now, too, because in conjunction with "We're setting the example. "We're setting the example". [Aaron] One of us will be having an attitude about something, just tired or exhausted or frustrated; and I'll be like, "Okay, are you self-controlled right now?" We say it a little quieter to each other. [Jennifer] Okay. So, what-- [Aaron] Is there any other phrases? We say other things. [Jennifer] I'm sure there are and we can come back to this if we think about it, but I was gonna ask, "What is it that we value? "What are some things that we really value?" [Aaron] The Word of God. We have to start with that. I know that sounds like the default answer, but it has to be the number one thing we value. It's what we tell our kids is the most important thing, it's what we try and teach them, we try and live it. So, I think the Word of God is... Now, I will say this, and it's something I've been convicted on recently and something that God's been convicting me on for my whole life, probably. I think this, and then I'm like, "But do I actually show this?" Am I in my Word as much as I could be? I don't want to say "should be" because I don't think there's a number or how many chapters or how many words or how many verses, or whatever; but I know in my heart when I'm in and out of it. I know when I'm giving God's Word the attention it deserves in my life. We could feel it. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] Recently you've been kind of just overwhelmed with the book launch that-- [Jennifer] Lots of stuff to do. [Aaron] Lots of stuff to do and I was just thinking to myself, I'm like, "I wonder what-I didn't say this to you, but I was wondering when you were in the Word. [Jennifer] It's so funny, it's not funny, it's... Wow, this is really convicting because I know exactly the moment in that conversation where I had this thought that, "I wouldn't be feeling this way "if I was in the Word", and-- [Aaron] When was it? 'cause I was thinking about it. I didn't say it to you, I was just... 'Cause I was just encouraging you and comforting you and letting you know it was gonna be okay. [Jennifer] No, it was really impactful for me, and I've been in the Word since. I think sometimes we just get in these ruts or seasons where we're busy or we're going strong on certain areas of our life, and we don't realize when another area have kind of-- [Aaron] Yeah, we've neglected an area. [Jennifer] Been neglected, and that was happening with me for a couple days. I'd say about a week and a half. [Aaron] Well, me too, and I was feeling... Remember I told you how I was feeling? [Jennifer] Yeah, I think it was compiling. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] I think the Lord is good. [Aaron] Well, I was just thinking on Sunday, the message was about... Actually the message wasn't about it, but Matt said, "Hey, we can't know all of this in one sitting. "We have to just go line by line, verse by verse, "chapter by chapter, over years of reading and reading, "and re-reading and re-reading, and re-memorizing "and re-stating, and chewing it over." Then this morning, I was listening to J. Vernon McGee, and he was in Isaiah and he was bringing up the scripture that talks about "precept upon precept, line by line", and he was saying... You know, it took five years for J. Vernon McGee to teach through the Bible. That was just him going through one time. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] Five years. How much do we go 'precept by precept'? Are we just reading through it? Laying on the knowledge that we're getting out of it. That was another good tangent, but Word of God I think is the most valuable thing. It needs to be-- [Jennifer] Bolded? [Aaron] Yeah, bolded and-- [Jennifer] Italicized? [Aaron] Italicized, highlighted in green, but I think it needs to be more evident in our own lives for our kids sake and for our own sake. [Jennifer] Yeah. What a great tool, this mission statement, to remind us to do that. If this is gonna be a foundational thing that is in front of us by maybe putting it on a plaque in our house or however we're gonna display this once we do finalize it. To be reminded of that, you know, every single day. [Aaron] Yeah, "Let's go back to the Word of God. "What does the Word say about this situation." [Jennifer] So, what other things do we value? I feel like we value-- [Aaron] Stewardship? [Jennifer] Stewardship. [Aaron] Is that a good word? [Jennifer] That's good. [Aaron] Like we value-- [Jennifer] I'm gonna write that down. [Aaron] Being good stewards, which we talk a ton about in 'Marriage after God'. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Because of how important it is to our ministries. [Jennifer] It's like the whole book's message, really. [Aaron] "Are you stewarding the way God's given you well?" That's the whole book actually. [Jennifer] I guess part of what I was gonna say goes along with this. I don't know if you would agree, but recognizing our need verses want in minimalism. Not that we're minimalist people because we have stuff. We have stuff, but I don't feel like we exaggerate and go outside of what we need. Does that make sense? [Aaron] I would agree. I think there's been seasons in our life that, because of discontentment or dissatisfaction or whatever, we've chased after things. [Jennifer] Or acquired. [Aaron] Collecting things, or buying things that we don't need. That's rarer, I would say. I'm not gonna say, "It's not super rare", but we tend to get what we need and not much more. Again, there's plenty of things that we have. [Jennifer] I think we've been good over time of challenging each other or encouraging each other, you know, "Maybe we don't need that thing right now", or "Hey, if you are gonna go get that, think about this." [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] You've done it with me with kids clothes before. "Hey, instead of buying off that website "can we just try and"-- [Aaron] "Because they're not gonna fit in it "in six weeks." [Jennifer] "Or they're gonna be stained up." [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Or whatever the reasoning's were. That was just the first thing off the top of my head. I think that... [Aaron] Stewardship minimalist. Yeah, I agree. We're not minimalist, but we definitely think on a more, "What do we need verses what do we want? "And what do we want, is it something we need, "and is it something we can use and is it gonna be"-- [Jennifer] We're willing to be confronted by that, for sure. [Aaron] Right. What is other things we value? Relationships? [Jennifer] I was gonna say people. [Aaron] People, yeah. I would say this goes up higher. [Jennifer] You can even see this in our kids because Olive really values relationships. [Aaron] Mm-hmm. [Jennifer] All of our kids do, but I could just see it in them. [Aaron] Yeah. Well, it's of course, the Word of God points us to-- [Jennifer] God's relationship. [Aaron] I would say that's almost the number one message in the Bible, other than Jesus Christ and him crucified, which everything points to that, is why he died for us is to give us relationship with the Father, and then through that gives us relationship with other people, right? Like, John 17, which we should put down because the next thing we're gonna talk about is scripture, but John 17 is a major one, which is the high priestly prayer Jesus prays for his disciples and for everyone who believes in the message that the disciples bring to the world; is that we would be one. That we'd be unified just as Christ and God are unified. [Jennifer] Yeah, but before we move on to the scripture section, I had some things I wanted to share about the values. So, 'cause this is all about brain-dumping and just getting out of our minds and heart what we believe to be true about our family, to build up this mission statement. So, words like 'creativity'. I feel like we value. Inspiring each other towards greatness. [Aaron] Can I throw in a word? Creating. [Jennifer] Creating, okay. [Aaron] I mean, we've done the self-publishing thing, the blogging, the social media. It's just kind of been a part of what we do. So, creativity, inspiring, but we also create. It's part of us. [Jennifer] Mmm, that's good. [Aaron] Elliot loves to draw, Olive loves to paint. [Jennifer] Yeah. That's good, lots of Lego building. [Aaron] Lots of Lego building! By the way the Lego thing you built yesterday is awesome. It's like this huge city. [Jennifer] It was supposed to be Bleecker St. in New York. [Aaron] Okay. [Jennifer] I just didn't get to finish it. [Aaron] I didn't see the signs. [Jennifer] Oh, go back and look at it. So yeah, some of the things that we value are experiences where, being able to go to a museum if we're near one, or-- [Aaron] I feel like that falls under adventure, adventurous, right? [Jennifer] Okay. Yeah, but it's like learning experiences. [Aaron] Well, put learning then. That's a good word. [Jennifer] Learning. So, whether that's-- [Aaron] Learning is a big thing-- [Jennifer] Experiences or books, resources, pretty much anything I can get my hands on for us or for the kids that encourages growth and investment. [Aaron] All the educational films like Marvels, Avengers, and Iron Man, those are really for us. [Jennifer] For us. [Aaron] For us, yeah. Yeah, I think learning is a great word. So, under value... [Jennifer] Does food count? [Aaron] Oh, you know, can I say wisdom? [Jennifer] Wisdom, yeah. [Aaron] And you actually should put food on there because that is a huge thing for us. Food. We love food! [Jennifer] Not just food. [Aaron] God loved food. [Jennifer] I know but the experience of food, like the actual tasting good and figuring out what flavors are there, but then the experience of eating with people. [Aaron] Yeah, so actually food kinda encompasses all these. [Jennifer] Okay so, on our family mission statement it's gonna say, "The Smith family", and then in bold right beneath that-- [Aaron] "Food." [Jennifer] 'Food'. [Aaron] That'll be our... It's short. [Jennifer] Semi-calling Gods word. So, it's like both, right? It's like the Word of Life. [Aaron] Well, God's Word is the bread of life. So, it just literally all fits in. Everyone here that's listening, our mission statement is [Jennifer And Aaron] Food. [Jennifer] This is how our conversations really go in real life, to you guys. We're not makin' this up for you. [Aaron] I'm pretty sure I can fit every single one of those things into food. [Jennifer] We'll figure it out. [Aaron] Yeah. Wisdom, what I mean by wisdom is, wisdom is the application of knowledge. [Jennifer] Yup. [Aaron] 'Cause you can know lots of things and do nothing with it. [Jennifer] Not ever implement it. [Aaron] Yeah, wisdom is like, "Oh, I actually know how "to navigate this kind of relationship, "therefore I'm going to navigate it that way." Or, "I know that I should keep my mouth shut "in this situation", so I could choose to act on the knowledge or not. So, wisdom is taking the Word of God, taking life experiences and letting it teach us and then saying, "Oh, last time we experienced that. "Let's make a different decision this time." [Jennifer] Mmm. [Aaron] We were actually just talking about this in the car. All the experiences the God's given us, hard ones that have taught us things. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] That a lot of people won't ever experience. [Jennifer] Right, but everyone listening has their own set of experiences that-- [Aaron] That no one else will have. [Jennifer] No one else will have. [Aaron] That God wants to use to teach them wisdom. [Jennifer] Yeah, but wisdom is saying, "Okay, I'm going "to learn from that, and not just learn from it, but"-- [Jennifer] Apply it. [Aaron] "I'm gonna apply the knowledge to my life now "regardless of how easy it is or how it feels to my flesh." [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, wisdom is a big one. [Jennifer] Okay, cool. So, moving on, were there any more scriptures that you wanted to share? [Aaron] Think of some scriptures... [Jennifer] One, you brought up generosity earlier, and so one of the scriptures that came to my mind was 2 Corinthians 9:6-8, it says, "The point is this: whoever sows sparingly "will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully "will also reap bountifully. "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, "not reluctantly or under compulsion, "for God loves a cheerful giver." So, I just thought about that. [Aaron] That's a great one. Cheerful giver. [Jennifer] I think it defines how we give, which I love. [Aaron] Yeah we don't ever, I mean we try not to give out of compulsion. As in, "Oh, we must do this!" No, we'd be like, "We want to do this." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, that's a good one. Another one I think of is the Great Commission in Mathew 28, where Jesus literally tells the church what it's job is. It says, Mathew 28:18, "And Jesus came and said to them, ""All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son "and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe "all that I have commanded you. "And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." [Jennifer] I love that last portion. [Aaron] Yeah, and we can take this as our individual mandates, but really it's the mandate for the church as a whole, 'cause there's all these different functioning parts. [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] Discipling, evangelism, teaching-- [Jennifer] Baptizing. [Aaron] Baptizing, all these different things, and we sometimes get to do all of them, and sometimes get to just play at planting or watering. [Jennifer] A portion of it, mm-hmm. [Aaron] It's what the church's job is and I think it should be what our job is. [Jennifer] I feel like if I could summarize that whole verse, it would say, "to make Him known", you know? [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Like, to know Him and to make Him known. That's such a big-- [Aaron] Put that down. That's a awesome thing, make Him known. I think that should definitely be in our statement because that is our life. We want our children to do that. [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] We want our children to know Him. [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] And then we want our children to make Him known. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Is our desire. [Jennifer] Okay, so we want to encourage you guys that as you do jump into experiencing this process of creating a family mission statement, to go to scripture, to see where your family values line up according to His Word, because it is foundational to how we live our lives and do what we do. This was just to give you guys a glimpse into the behind the scenes, Aaron and Jen, and how we communicate through things like this. Being able to share your vision for your family and life, being able to come up with, and create a family mission statement. It's supposed to be a unifying experience of togetherness, intimacy, understanding one another, identifying "who are we" and "what are we doing"? [Aaron] Yeah, "Who are the Smiths?" [Jennifer] Well, "who are they listening, who are you?" And kinda just build this missions statement to look forward to sharing it with your family. [Aaron] Yeah, and we're not done with this. We are going to on our own, now, finish this up; but this was our getting started. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] We started it out. We're glad that you got to join us on this candid conversation of us trying to think out "who we are and what we're about". [Jennifer] Yeah. I did want to share a couple practical things. When you do do a family mission statement, based off of what I've seen and you guys have probably seen too. Some fun ways to have this experience and share it with each other is use a whiteboard, or get some poster paper, or a pen and paper, or like we just did, use your computer, your phone, whatever it takes to make those notes. You can brain-dump and then cross stuff out as you go, but have fun with it. Also, some examples of making it visible in the home. I have some people say, "In this house", and then they list all their words. [Aaron] So, once we're done with it we can put this up somewhere so we're always seeing, "Hey, look what we... "We're not acting the way we say we're gonna act." [Jennifer] Exactly. Some people do the last name in bold at the top and then share the core values or the mission statement. Some people put it in a frame. Some people put it on script, on canvas. There's so many different ways that you can visibly show it in your home and the great thing about that is-- [Aaron] Tattoos, that's a really good one, right? [Jennifer] Just tattoo it on our backs? [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] No, but this is a great thing, like you said, to be mindful of how we operate as a family. We can even share as our kids get older, and teach them through it like, "Hey, we're the Smith's and we do hard things. "See it says it right there." So, those are just some things and we wanted to encourage you guys in that. [Aaron] Yeah, and I hope you had fun with us, too. We had fun. We're gonna finish it up, we'll probably do it on a date night or over the next... It doesn't have to be done right away, right. It's something that we can evolve with us. [Jennifer] It's a work in progress and so many people who have shared theirs with ours have said, "It's still a work in progress, "and you can change it and alter it as you go." Remember, you can incorporate your family, your kids and everyone to participate in it, but we did wanna challenge you guys with doing it. Even if it's just the initial go at it like we just did. [Aaron] Start it on your next date night. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] That's the reason, you're like, "Oh, we have to go "do our mission statement. "Oh, we'll need a babysitter! "Let's go do this." [Jennifer] Have fun, have fun, have fun! [Aaron] Yeah, and then invite your kids into it also. Not on date night. Go to date night, start it, come home, invite them in afterwards, or on another day. [Jennifer] And you guys don't need a specific set of questions to figure out. What we just did is we just said, "What are some phrases "and words that define our family, "of what we know of our family already?" [Aaron] We just started. [Jennifer] We just did it. Ask each other hard questions. [Aaron] Cool, so we like to end our episodes with a prayer, and so, Jennifer, would you pray for us? [Jennifer] Sure. Dear Lord, Thank you for the gift of marriage. May we continue to walk in obedience to Your Word as we seek to fulfill Your will for our lives and our marriage. We pray, we would consider the purpose You have for our marriage and we pray we will work together to communicate what our family mission statement is. We pray we would humbly submit it before You and that it would become a pillar in our family and in our life, that reminds us what we are doing and where we are headed. May this family mission statement build up according to Your core values, be an anchor for our marriage and family, motivating us to live our lives on purpose. May the experience of considering and building our family mission statement be a time of togetherness intimacy and understanding. Thank you for the hope You give us every day. May we honor You with our lives. In Jesus name, Amen. [Aaron] Amen. So, we just want to thank every one for joining us this week and listening to this episode. I hope you had fun with us. It was a lot of fun for us, as I said earlier. But go, start a mission statement with your spouse and with your family, and see what happens. See how it focuses you. You might end up finding out that you're participating in things that don't even line up with what you guys believe as a family. That might be cool. Or you might realize that there's opportunities out there that you could be tapping into because of it. We just wanted to thank you. We look forward to having you next week, and if you have not yet went to shop.marriageaftergod,com and picked up a copy of our new book, "Marriage After God", we'd love to invite you to do so. We thank you for everything. You guys are awesome. All the reviews, all of the comments and stuff we get on our social media, and just all the listens. You guys listening to these podcasts, we just so appreciate you guys. We look forward to having you next week. See you later. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes, also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

  Fitting In Fitness & Healthy Eating... On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have a return guest from episode 93, Dr. Slyvia Gonsahn-Bollie. She is America's Favorite Obesity Doctor and she comes back for a second time to help our busy women especially moms in the Lunch and Learn Community just how to fit health and fitness into their busy schedule. This episode should serve as the busy mom's guide to get over the hump of losing weight and staying on their fitness journey. The conversation follows the trend of our initial one where we focus on many of the obstacles that these busy women face when dealing with trying to juggle working, taking care of families and having little time to actually take care of themselves. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share the episode with a friend or family member. Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Soundcloud, iHeartRadio, Spotify Sponsors: Lunch and Learn Community Online Store (code Empower10) Pierre Medical Consulting (If you are looking to expand your social reach and make your process automated then Pierre Medical Consulting is for you) Dr. Pierre's Resources - These are some of the tools I use to become successful using social media Links/Resources: Official website – www.drsylviagbollie.com Twitter – www.twitter.com/fittmd Facebook – www.facebook.com/fittmd Instagram –  www.instagram.com/fittmd Social Links: Join the lunch and learn community – https://www.drberrypierre.com/joinlunchlearnpod Follow the podcast on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/lunchlearnpod Follow the podcast on twitter – http://www.twitter.com/lunchlearnpod – use the hashtag #LunchLearnPod if you have any questions, comments or requests for the podcast For More Episodes of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry Podcasts https://www.drberrypierre.com/lunchlearnpodcast/ If you are looking to help the show out Leave a Five Star Review on Apple Podcast because your ratings and reviews are what is going to make this show so much better Share a screenshot of the podcast episode on all of your favorite social media outlets & tag me or add the hashtag.#lunchlearnpod Download Episode 111 Transcript Episode 111 Transcript.. Introduction Dr. Berry: And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I’m your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com, as well as the host of Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Bring you another amazing episode with Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie who is, if you remember that name is actually a repeat guest of ours. I was very fortunate enough to get her back on a second time because I know she's crazy busy, but I was able to get it back because I had a lot of feedback from her previous episode, which was episode 93. If you're unfamiliar or if you just a new subscriber since the last time she was on. And she talked about obesity, obesity-related medicine, and gave us a lot of tips on how to kind of get us and keep us on our new year's resolutions, especially because a lot of them tend to fall under the wanting to lose weight category. So we got her back and again, I got a question from Lunch and Learn community. Well, Dr. Berry, I'm a busy mom. I work, I take care of the kids, I take care of my family. I really don't have the time to be healthy. Like what can I do? And that's where, you know what I said, I could've given her some tips, right? I could have given her some tips. They probably wouldn't have been the best. But I say good. If I'm going to talk about weight loss tips and especially for my busy moms out there, why not bring America's obesity specialist to talk to us, to educate us, to really get us on the right path. So this episode is going to be for the busy moms out there who have way too many responsibilities, way too many things to do and unfortunately that happens, right? And we all know is that the health tends to fall by the wayside, right? Like usually you have to take care of everyone's personal wellbeing and housing and work and everything else tend to happen. And unfortunately our health usually suffers, right? Usually is the case in this standpoint here. So we have Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie to really educate our busy moms and gives tips on how to stay on our weight journey. Right? And we're going to talk about weight journey a lot because I think, and I loved it because a lot of times we think about weight loss at this point A to point B type of thing. But really what she talks about, she says, no, this is a lifestyle change that you have to like go for the rest of your life, right? So even when you get to that goal weight, you have to understand like you have to keep on going. That’s just the second part, right? We broke it down in parts. Just a second part, just getting to the weight. So quick little bio again, if you had not checked out episode 93 please go back and check out episode 93, so drberrypierre.com/llp093 because it was an amazing guest, especially it was an amazing topic. And again, we're hitting home today with the busy moms. So Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie to just to kind of give a little quick bio from her. She's a board-certified internal medicine physician. She's an obesity medicine specialist who helps inspire optimal health through honesty and hope. She lost 40 pounds, overcoming emotional eating and physical inactivity. Now she has both personal as well as professional expertise in weight loss as well as weight maintenance. As a working mom herself, a wife and self-professed foodie. She keenly understands the limitations that prevent busy people from achieving their health goals. Dr. Bollie is passionate about helping busy people, especially working women, obtain and maintain a happy and healthy weight. At the end we're going to give you her links to follow her cause she's pretty much on all social media is just like I am. Even in the show notes, you'll have a chance to find where she's at because again, this is a person that you need to follow. She does actually weekly teachings on health and weight loss and again absolutely amazing person. Like I said, I was very fortunate enough to get here a second time around. So again, if you have not had a chance, remember, subscribe to the podcast, leave a five-star review and let her know how great she did on the podcast. Because I tell you, she blew it out of the water. You guys have a great day. Episode Dr. Berry: Alright, Lunch and Learn community, we have a repeat guest on today's episode and definitely one that was, you know, really requested that you guys love for an episode. You know, Dr. Bollie and you know, she's come back, right. You know, I was able to get her to come back for at least one more time. We haven't annoyed it too much and she really going to be talking about the busy mom. Right? And I know I have a lot of Lunch and Learn community listeners who ran into that issue of having to balance their health, their kids' well-being, they spouse well-being and everything, job, everything else. And unfortunately, that health tends to fall at the wayside. So ladies and gentlemen, please again a quick little introduction again and thank you for Dr. Bollie for coming back to the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Berry. You know, I love being here. You're so wonderful. So thank you for having the back and forth. And I love the lunch and learn community and just the fact that you're spreading this information because it's so important and the diversity and the topics that you're sharing also. So thank you for having me back. Dr. Berry: So for those who, maybe, someone, you know, got a lot of listeners since the last time we talked, right? So just give them a little bit of introduction of who you are. You know, why you're so important and you know why, you know, I was again, fortunate enough to kind of get you for a second time around? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Oh, awesome. Okay. Well, so I am Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie. I'm board certified in internal medicine and obesity medicine, but I probably should back because you know, we all have this program spill that we do. But I am a wife. I'm a mom, I'm a doctor, I'm a runner, I'm a foodie. So I have many hats and, and, but I'm passionate about helping busy people, especially work for women, obtain and maintain our happy, healthy weight through practical lifestyle interventions. And this for me all kind of started with my own weight loss journey, which began in 2014 late 2014 but I count 2015 as my actual start. That was when I did my first 10 K at trained up to and did it. So I've just sold it five years on my fitness and weight loss journey and I don't even like calling it a weight loss journey and we'll talk about that my weight journey. So I have personal and professional experience with it. I am. When I started this journey, it was about a year and a half after having my first child, my son. For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook or on social media, I have a second child now. I'm five months postpartum. But with my first child, that was when this, what I'm going to talk about today, really hit home for me. You know, I was getting used to being a new mom. I was just finishing up my residency. I was a chief resident of transitioning. So chief resident, which for us is an extra fourth year. And also I'm an attending, so becoming like stepping into my new, into my career. And then I was also just getting used to everything. And so I put everything ahead of me and my health and my weight, even though I was preaching health to other people. Right? So I was 40 pounds overweight at the time my son was one and I kind of held onto that for about a year and a half. So finally it started to impact the way I was counseling patients. I would be like what did you eat for lunch? And then I would hear in my own head, what did you eat for lunch? So exercise, like I would ask the patient, did you exercise it here? I hear the voice, did you exercise? And so I started to feel very convicted about what I was doing. So this, for that reason I started to focus on my own health and prioritize in it. And I started by training for that race of which is the monument, 10k, a popular race here in Richmond, Virginia where I live. And then from then just kept building and building and growing. But it's not easy, you know. So because of that, I know, as I said, it's hard to fit in fitness. It's challenging to make those healthy food choices, especially when you're stress, especially when you're busy. So I know that the journey has to be individualized in some ways. Like we can share in a community in terms of encouraging each other. And there are some general things that theme to it that we can do, but you really have to address your own individual journey to try to be able to fit this in. Dr. Berry: Interesting. We should definitely touch on a few parts. One, I want to highlight that she said this, this is one of her first 10 k's which means she's run multiple, which is absolutely amazing. And you talk about the weight journey. I take care of a lot of patients and now I do inpatient medicine. So I tend to see a lot of the end state stuff when I did inpatient medicine, outpatient medicine, you know. It was always that start right where I used to see a lot of at the beginning. And I think they were mentally at the point where they're saying doc like I'm ready to lose some weight, but I didn't necessarily know how. And I think a lot of times it was that population of those moms, those women who were busy lifting. Like again, it is not like they weren't doing anything. Life was just happening all around them and whether it be work, whether it be school or whether taking care of kids, whether be taken care of their family. Unfortunately, the health guy left on the back burner. So when you talk about your personal weight journey, was it like, were those patients the big like kind of step that's a, you know what I gotta do something because I like how can I keep looking at my patients over and over and over again and tell them exactly what they need to do to lose weight, but I'm not personally following it myself. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Definitely. I mean, because, you know, as I've mentioned, I think in the last podcast. There’s a study out there that shows that physicians who are overweight or have obesity are less likely to counsel their patients on it. And I think for me personally, I started to feel that I understand that because I almost felt like a hypocrite, you know, talking to people about what they were doing and I was not doing it and live in it. So once I noticed that it was starting to, it had gotten to the point that I felt it was starting to impact the way I was able to deliver care, especially to a set population of patients that really needed the care. Then I said, okay, it's time for me to reevaluate it. And I think for me personally, how and why it was helpful, it really improved by empathy, right? Because there's something different. And we all know this, we were both parents. So you know, there's different from book learning. Like there's these we would say by the book, but as a parent, but once you have your own child, you're like, and you see the nuances, oh, maybe I can't do that. Maybe an extra 30 minutes of screen time is okay today. Yeah, that's it. That's just what it boils down to. So that's what I think happened. And so what I realized that I had to do was to number one, stop just telling people what to do and think about why and so, and think about what I was doing in that let me be able to help to empathize and to better help people. So the first step really was as stop beating myself up and being very negative because you know, I was sending these lots of the goals that weren't really attainable for a person who had eight then a 16-month-old child and also had a busy professional husband and had a lot and was working full time. So maybe really saying that I need to work out 30 minutes every day, wasn't going to happen initially in the beginning or saying that I should eat, you know, go from drinking soda to drink and water every day. That was going to be challenging because you've got to get acclimated to that decrease in and that's on many levels, not just psychologically, but also physiologically. Your body just used to a certain level of sweetness and you got to tone it down so you're able to tolerate the regular water - clean water. I get used to drinking water. Dr. Berry: I get used to, sometimes I look at juice now and it looks so good. Get Back. (Yeah.) Now the goals were, were there goals that you know we're kind of placed upon you? Like people thought like, well, you should be able to do 30 minutes every day. You should just cold turkey drink juice. Was those like just kind of like outside goals, kind of waited upon you? Where those kinds of like internalized in yourself and then you kind of realize this is not a successful route if I continue to try to go this way? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Yeah, well I think, you know, we have guidelines right? As, as physicians and a dietician’s health community, so their guidelines set, right? So the American Heart Association recommends that we get 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week. So that's two and a half hours of exercise per week and moderate being that you can move without sinking. So like while you're jogging, while you're walking, you're moving fast enough that you're not sinking or an hour and a half of vigorous exercise, which is moving fast and if we can't talk while you exercise. So that's the American heart association guidelines. So that, of course, is what I would strive for because that's when I'm counseling my patients on it. Now the dietary guidelines are controversial for people. There are people you know who don't believe in me, don't believe in dairy, things like that. Personally, I feel like the literature really supports more of a Mediterranean diet and as close to the plant-based as you can be, which is hard because I do love my chicken. I love chicken. So unapologetically I'll try it. So, but you know, so my goal was to really minimize, I don't eat red meat or pork since I was since age 15 so that wasn't hard for me. But kind of back on like chicken, fried foods, things like that, and trying to eat as clean as possible, which is minimizing process foods. So those were my goals based on all the data and all the things that I've seen about eating a healthy diet. So that, and for me, the big one was sugar like and is still cutting down on sugar because when I'm stressed I tend to eat a lot of sugar. And that's again very physiological thing because those high levels of cortisol make you want to eat more sugar. Dr. Berry: No stress like a mom. No, no, no. No stress. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So that's where I feel a lot of pressure came from because I knew the guidelines, I know what I'm supposed to do, but you know, there's a gap between what I'm doing and what I need to do. Dr. Berry: So when you were making the mental transition even before you made the leap, like physically as far as stopping doing things and you know, working out more, what was the support system like? Because I feel when I talked to the moms out there, a lot of times they feel like it's on their own. And they feel because it's on their own, that's what makes it more difficult than not to even start and if they do start to continue. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. Well, I'm glad you talked about it. So let me characterize this. What would I call the person then? Then we'll get the "not answer that question because I do want to talk about what I called this busy woman syndrome". That's what I call it syndrome. Or for those people who are in the church also known as Martha Syndrome. So people who are familiar with the Bible and things like that. So if you are not familiar with the Bible, I'll tell you real quick. So it's a story about two sisters, Mary and Martha and Jesus comes to visit and this is paraphrased of course. Jesus comes to visit their house and you know, Martha is all busy. She's in the kitchen, she's cooking, she's cleaning up their house, she's just all over the place busy. Really what I would be doing. Mary meanwhile is the chill sister. She's chilling, seat by the Jesus at his feet, just like enjoying the moment. And Martha comes out. It just like I could see myself doing it. It's like, Hey Jesus, like tell Mary to get some business about herself. Tell her to come and help me. Let's get ready. Do something. And instead of reprimanding Mary as you would expect, Jesus actually says, Martha, you are concerned about many things. Meaning you got way too much going on. Mary has chosen the most important thing, which is to just be present at the moment, to enjoy the moment and to spend time meaningfully with people she loves. So I think this is a perfect picture of kind of how we are. We put a lot on ourselves and some of it, yes it's true, we must do it. I mean we have to work, have to cook, like all these things. But there's a time and a place where we can actually, where we feel like we need to be doing something where we can take a break and sit down and be present in the moment. And I think when it comes to health, we have to carve out those moments where we can sit and be present and say, I'm going to prioritize my health. Whether that moment is eating something healthy or making a healthier choice or is actually going out and exercising and doing something for a few minutes for ourselves. Dr. Berry: More than Mary, less than Martha. I love it. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So now, you asked the question on what was the support system like? So that's why I kind of bring out too. For me, I'm a person of faith. So I think a lot of times when we think about like our health journey or weight journey in general, and again getting back to this concept of weight be, and we can talk about Dr. Berry at the end, may be about, it'll be in a weight journey and not just a weight loss journey because too often we focus on that weight loss. And once we get to that weight loss is like, Oh, I lost the weight and let me go back to eat and what I eat and you know, and you regain all the weight and you're back on another weight loss journey. So I really want to shift our mindset to it being a weight journey where that includes the weight loss, the weight maintenance and everything where we're doing it. So for the weight journey, it's so important not to do it in a vacuum. For me, I followed the philosophy of faith, family, friends, fitness, and food. So I like alliteration. So all those F's. So, but faith is the basis of thinking about it. You know, really for me Biblically, what does the Bible say about health and taking care of our bodies and being able to stay healthy and using that as a support in that some people who are a part of a faith community, maybe your church or synagogue or your mosque, it has some resources that you can use to build into that. So if faith is important to you, don't exclude that from the journey of your fitness journey. So that's one of the things. So it's creating support with what we already have versus looking at it. Now, and that's, you know, probably more of the touchy-feely time. For me on my fitness journey, I would say friends were important. I have a very good friend and she to me was the key to unlocking my weight loss journey. And to be perfectly honest, because I am such a perfectionist, I can be very hard on myself. So you know, I'm like, oh, I didn't make that 30 minutes. I didn't get two and a half hours, this and this and that. And so one day I was talking to her about how frustrated I was about losing weight and my fitness journey and she just stopped me and she was like, be nice to Sylvia. I like her about her saying that just like it hit me. I'm like, yeah be nice. Because when you're kind to yourself, you're not holding or nice to yourself or to anyone. Be nice. Because most women were very caring and will help people. We're not going to be, you know, a kid comes to you and like, you know, mom, I didn't, I wasn't able to get a hundred on my test this week. You're going to be like, that's okay. You got an 89 and it's all right. You'll try harder next time. Let's figure out what we can do to get those grades up or to see why you miss those points. So that same kind of kindness that we would extend to other people, we have to extend to ourselves. So, okay, this week I wasn't able to make it in two and a half hours, but let me look back and realistically think why that was, oh my goodness. You know, it was close to the month. I had to get all those charts and I had to submit on my work at work. There was a lot going on, that was an obstacle. It's not an excuse. It's an obstacle to me getting this work done. So it took me getting that workout in, all right, but now that identified the obstacles, what could I have possibly done to do and instead to get that workout in instead, or what? How could I have set myself up to make better food choices? Okay. I know that it was a week that was filled with PTA meetings, soccer practices, football practices, dance practice, whatever. And so realistically me thinking that I was going to cook dinner every night, didn't it make sense? But maybe instead of us rolling up to a fast food place, I could've just like meal prep and make like chicken. It used some big chicken or some enough food for a day or it could have gone to a healthy place and gotten a family meal pack that we could have actually had two days of leftovers from. So those are the kinds of choices when you're being kind to yourself. So I talked about faith, I talked about family, talked about friends first and then family. So the family is a tricky one, right? (Let’s talk about, yes.) Because sometimes family can actually, it can help or hinder on the weight loss, on the weight journey. Because let's say, and especially for moms, they're like, I hear this all the time, my kids don't like eating that or my husband does not like eating that. And then, and that's true, there's data to support that, right? Actually, for married couples, that data was an in married couples and I'm probably could work for common law couples too, but for married couples that you're more likely to adhere to your diet plan or your healthy eating plan if your spouse is involved with you. And also in the first year, an interesting fact in the first year of marriage, you more likely to gain 50 pounds. So there's a newlywed 50 too for women. Because we start heated up to that. So you know, so having that your partner, your spouse involved with you is so key because it will help. But what do you do if they're not involved? Like for me, I love my husband. He supports me as much as he can, but he has been blessed with a great metabolism. He got a six pack from drinking a six pack of coke. Like he just gets, it just comes naturally. He doesn't have to work out. So he can't really be on this journey with me because he can't get it. So he just eats what he wants to be. Right. I'll ask him, I'm like, can you go get me some fruit bars and then wanting, the one time I asked him for that and then he came back with like a box of Gelato and I'm like, ah, the nutritional content of this is very different like you're not helping me at all. He was like, oh, it's just ice cream. Yeah. Dr. Berry: That's usually what I get. I usually get like, well, my kids don't eat that way. My family members don’t eat that way. Maybe I don't have time to cook two different meals for two different groups of people. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. Well, what I'll say is don't make it hard for yourself. And that's what I did. So number one, I shifted my mindset rather than say, you know, oh, I don't have them and he's not helping me, or my kids don't want this. I said, okay, well this is another form of mommy me time. I get to eat, mommy gets to eat what she wants to eat, they can eat whatever they want, but this is my me time. This is something I'm doing just for me. I'm going to eat this salad for me. I'm going to eat this kale for me. And that's how it's for me. You know, I'm buying my own personal grocery. Actually, now that are kind of territorial. They're like actually had guests recently and they were eating me, I'm special low carb bread and I was. (The guest bread is over there.) Why are you eating my bread? So yes it does. But that's how I changed my mindset about it. To make it easy on myself, I keep the protein the same, but I kept the carb so we can eat the same protein. So be it chicken, be it turkey, be it fish, I eating it. That's me. You know what I mean? They're not even that. But I keep the protein the same for the most part. And then I keep the vegetables the same. I'm lucky to do, especially my son loves all vegetables, so I keep the vegetables same, but I cut the carb or switch to the carb about. So I’m in a family of big rice eaters, they like a lot of rice. Try to get them to eat brown rice is hard. They like white rice. Dr. Berry: The brown rice talk over here. It doesn't even, I know exactly what that white rice. Family is life. I know that life is life. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So they're not trying to have that. Sometimes if I get the right brand, like Uncle Ben's friend of brown rice. I can interchange it out, but it has to be the first day, you know, its very thing. So anyway, that being said, I've changed the carb about, so I just do a half a plate of vegetables for myself or I might do cauliflower rice for myself and then they can eat that. And that makes it very easy because then I, or I've put a salad, you know, then that way I'm not fixing to different meals. We're sharing the same protein. We're sharing the same vegetable is only a quick, simple thing that I have to do for myself. Dr. Berry: I love how you talked about having to make them the mindset shift first before the action occurred. Whatever that action is. Cause I think that you know, really slows a lot of moms down. They may know, they may read all that they needed to read and they see all the videos needed to do. And they have that first step really doesn't happen and nothing subsequently is successful. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Well, I have been, you know, practicing now in the past five years. I've seen, I've had what, 15,000 plus patient encounters and I started obesity. Yeah, I know, right? They check this data and I'm a nerd, y'all know, I know this data. So, and then I, you know, and then I started weight loss doing, you know, 40% weight loss exclusively in 2017 and late 2016. So I've seen lots of patients, right. And one of them, and so I can, but I will say when it comes to weight loss, weight management, 90% of it is the mind. It's the mind. Because when you, you know, the old song says free your mind and the rest will follow. Once you make that mind shift, then these things that seemed hard, that seems like it's that were quote-unquote excuses your obstacles, you find a way around them. You find a solution for them but it, so I really, I’m a big proponent, a big advocate of the mind. I recently was working with someone and they wanted me to just like, give them formula. Just give me some exercises, just give me some things and it realistically you don't need me to do that. There are billions of exercises you just go on YouTube. I love to search for it and find new people to do that. There are billions of diets and the data supports the best diet for you is the one that works right? The one that you can stick to. So it really comes down to me helping you change your mindset. And I don't do it alone. So when we talk about the team, the other part of your team is figuring out what those mindsets are. For a lot of my patients that they will end up going to see a therapist or a psychologist because there is deeper than the weight. I always say weight is not just a number, it's a story. There's a story behind what got that person to that weight. And once you unlock that story and figure it out, then both as the physician, both as the clinician but also as them for themselves, then we can figure it out. So sometimes we, they end up needing a psychologist on the team and not just the provider, a physician on their team to help because there's a lot of comorbidities like depression, anxiety, trauma, PTSD. A lot of that is tied into weight as well. Dr. Berry: I know you said you were taking out they were comorbidities that are there. (I know.) Obesity-related. Because I remember the bill. Nope, that was it. So now that you have a team, right? You have your mindset has shifted, right? I'm a busy mom. Right? Like I have mentally made that leap. Right. Then I'm ready. Right. What do I do next? How do I start? And I guess is that, would you say that's the start of their weight journey? Like when does that actually begin? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Yeah, I would say your weight journey starts, once you decide and you make that change that you're ready to do it. No one can force you. No one can talk to you about it. You know, it's almost, I think last time we talked about I make it analogous for those who are in medicine or in healthcare to smoking cessation. Like when you stop smoking, quitting smoking, right? If you've ever been with this smoke grip, to get them to actually quit smoking as a matter what you put on the cigarette pet, where you put on the team, it doesn't matter. So we rate it. We say you're either pre contemplated, meaning you're not even thinking about it. So don't even talk to you, contemplating, you're thinking about it. Got some idea, but you're not ready for action yet. Grant action based and then you're in maintenance and then relapse. And so I treat obesity just like that, which is model for change. That's the formal name of it. So, so when you now are conscious that you've really wanted to change and you're ready to, so you're in the contemplation stage, that's step two. So now you're ready for action and to make the change. So I think yes, the mind shift changes number one, and then ready for action. So I think number one, I tell people to identify, and I can send this to you, the link, I put it on my website, I made a little graph or sheet that kind of follows my weight loss journey. So you'll be able to go directly to her site. Download that. Yes. Dr. Berry: This will be on the show note for Lunch and Learn community so you'll be able to go directly to her site. Download that, mentally. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So now that you're ready for it and you can write down, you need to write down like acknowledge what are your barriers, what are the obstacles that you face, be it time, be it an unsupportive family. So yeah. So getting started, what I tell you to do is, so address your obstacles and create opportunities. So what I recommend that you do is write down everything that you identify as the obstacle. The common term for it is excuses. People say it's just an excuse. But again, that mindset shift, right? Excuses is a very defeating term. It makes, it puts blame on you. Like I'm not doing something, I'm supposed to do it, but I could be doing it. So I shift it from saying it's not an excuse, it's your life. It's a barrier to what you're trying to do and what you're trying to accomplish it. So instead it's an obstacle. And once you recognize as the obstacle, but that obstacles as opportunities. So now you have an opportunity to change what you're doing. So what I'll do, so like lack of time, for instance, what opportunities can you create for a time in your schedule and give yourself some options. Give yourself A, B, C, even D, E, F. So like for me, when I started back in late 2014, my obstacle time was a huge obstacle because at that time my husband was commuting about two hours a day back and forth. So that when I got home I had to take care of the baby, my little toddler. And that made it hard for me to go to the gym and exercise. Right. So what opportunities can I do? All right, well let me exercise in the morning instead. And how much time, I'm more of a morning person anyway. Let me try to get up earlier and exercise in the morning. Maybe I can get a baby stroller, like a jogging stroller. So I actually got one of those offline. Maybe I can find a gym that has childcare in with it. So I would join the gym with childcare in it. Okay, well sometimes I can't get to the gym. What can I do? Let me do some. I started actually with a rockin' body, so I started with that because actually one of my first obstacles was I didn't like exercising. At least I thought I did exercising. Dr. Berry: Very telling because I think a lot of people don't realize like that's actually alike. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: You have to like it. And that's why when you don't like doing something, you'll find any reason not to do it. So, of course, I don't have time because I don't like it. And what I realized in that, so that's actually a huge, not just a mindset shift, but also a barrier or obstacle. So what I realized is I was trying to force myself to do things I didn't like to do. So when I started with rocky and body, which was just like dancing and I am not a good dancer, but it made me feel like I was so things like do it that way. So I like doing that. It made me feel good, you know, and it has short workouts so it has some as short as 10 minutes and some as long as 45 minutes. Then I started the running, which one of my colleagues that I work with, he's like, oh he actually just turned 60 yeah, we celebrate the 60 but he's 60 years old, but he's been running for years. And he said, yeah, so 30 plus years he's done a Boston marathon, lots of things. So seeing him and just his consistency with it really inspired me. And so that's how it started. A trend for the first 10K that then I did. And because he was doing it and you know, he really motivated me to do it. And then I found I liked running, you know? And so I kept going, kept adding it, have added distance at a distance, did a marathon in 2016 and it kept doing the 10K and did my fifth monuments 10K. This year was my fifth one, four months postpartum. (Congratulation.) Thank you. So, but you don't know what you like to do until you try, you know? Whereas then I have other friends, I have colleagues, they like doing CrossFit, they like doing Hit, they liked doing weightlifting. I don't like doing that stuff. I recognize the value of it. But I know for myself I don't like it. I have to do it because it's good for the strength and aspect of it. So I say figure out what you like cause you may say I hate exercise, I don't like exercise. But really you just haven't found what you like to do. So challenge yourself to find the activity and think about activities you don't consider exercise that you do enjoy doing. Like do you enjoy dancing? Do you enjoy being outdoors? Do you enjoy, because then maybe you can find, uh, some form of exercise, quote-unquote that you enjoy doing too. Dr. Berry: What I love about what you just said, especially cause it's kind of eye-opening, is that a lot of us when we'd say, well, I don't have the time to exercise. Where we're really saying is I don't like that exercise that y'all want me to find time for us. So I'm not going to find time to do it. But once you find something you like, whatever that something is from an exercise standpoint, all of a sudden you'll wake up early in the morning and you'll stay up late at night, you'll squeeze it in during lunch. You'll do things for stuff you like which makes sense. Right? Again, when we got to the food we like, we'll do whatever we got to do for that food. We like, right, when you have an activity we like, we'll do it. We ever have to do. And I think once we hold up that same appraise with an exercise, whatever that exercise is for you, you'll find the time, right? Yeah. Some kids got to go to sleep, right. You know, family guy, you're taking it, you do that time to kind of be by yourself. And I liked that you said maybe you don't have time to go somewhere. Right. Maybe there's some stuff you can do even in your own house to kind of maximize the free time that you do have. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. And that was another, you brought up a good one. Another barrier, right? Healthy food doesn't taste good to me. Like that was probably, you know, is it, like I said, it's been five years. I forget where I started. Right. We want to front and act as we've been there. I've always been healthy. I've always been on this witness. No, I did not like healthy food when I first started. So that was my first month to set shift for me. It was just like, okay, well how I actually worked around this because I'm a foodie? Both of my parents owned a restaurant when I was a kid. I grew up like just immersed in food. Culture food is a big part of my life, but what I challenged myself with was how can it, rather than saying I don't like, maybe again, I'm not liking the healthy food I'm choosing. Or I'm choosing tasteless food. I'm not applying the same principles of Buddhism to my food, my healthy food. So what I will do is challenged myself to make my healthy food as delicious as possible, but still healthy and to find healthy options when I go out to eat. Because you know, again, being busy, I do have to eat out a lot. I do sometimes some weeks of his very busy. I may not have the time to cook the way I want to, but let me challenge myself to find those restaurants that have healthy options and let me challenge myself when I cooked to make it delicious, healthy, and delicious. Not just something dry or blend because I say I'd want to eat healthy. Don't punish yourself, enjoy what you're eating, but just try to stay within the parameters of making it healthy. Because to me, if you're a good cook, if you're a true foodie, then you can find deliciousness and make deliciousness with anything. Anyone can make it delicious. If you get to put a whole stick of butter in it and half a cup of sugar, but it takes real skill to make, you know, some quinoa delicious or it seemed to make this tofu delicious. So that's what I've been, what I challenged myself to do. And that's kind of how I worked around the barrier of not really finding healthy food at that time appealing. Dr. Berry: When we talk about healthy food, right? Because this is personally, I always run into the issue right? I'm a very visual person with the food and some of the foods that they called healthy I got to ask that question, it's not even a secondary question. Some of the food that they called healthy really don't look good. Like Hey, I haven't even like tasted it yet. But sometimes that mental barrier, they even taste food that's healthier for me it's difficult because I'm, "oh that food doesn't even my...what is that?" And I that's, that's sometimes I get, what am I looking at right here at the hospital and they do this, they always have like a vegetarian section. This thing that it looks like meatballs, but I know for a fact is not a meatball. And then it's almost like hard like a rock. Like it's just like, okay. And that's what always gets me like, and I know that's probably going to get a lot of moms out there, right? Like the food don't look good to us. It's difficult for us to even put it in our mouth to eat. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. So what I would challenge you to, what I would say to that is you're right then don't eat what does it look good to you? Like personally for me and, and that's again about knowing yourself and that mindset shift. I don't like big food and I shouldn't call it big, but I don't like to look for light foods. Big chicken. I told you I like chicken. Finally, I found one brand that actually does taste like chicken and it's made from, but when I read the ingredients like you when I know what do I really want to eat this, like wheat, soy and some kind of fungus, but it really tastes like chicken. But before that, I don't like those like big meatballs. I don't like big things like that because you're right, psychologically I'm expecting the taste, the texture of a meatball that I'm used to. And then when I get this and my brain is like automatically going to think it tastes gross because you know, it's not the meatball that I'm used to. So I would say focus on what you do like. So if you like vegetables, so initially within, you know, I know that I like vegetables so a lot of my things is stir fry. If he even looks on my Instagram page and stuff like that. There are a lot of stir fries because I can eat vegetables. There's a lot of eggplants. I like, eggplant is hardy. There is a Portobello mushroom, it's hardy. So more of the more vegetables which you know the plant-based community or argued that it's healthier for you anyway and cleaner for you than eating something that's processed to look like me in the first place. And so I would say if you identify that, then don't eat it because already if you don't think it looks good and you're right, most of the food is person visual and not only visual but also smelled too. So if you have that perception before you even put it in your mouth, it is not going to taste it. Once it hits the cognitive part of your brain, you know, it's missing all those functions. It’s missing the texture, it’s missing the taste that you're expecting and no one would like that. So don't eat it, don't eat it. Find something else that is appealing to you. Like maybe make the list of it. Now it is more challenging for those people who say, I don't like vegetables, which I do run into people like that or I only buy fruit. That again adds into your team, which is the second part. So you asked how do you get started? So address your obstacles and create opportunities to is assemble your team. Like we talked about your support system and your structure. I use the principle of fitness inspire through teamwork. That's my handle or whatever, FITT. So we need a team, right? So who's on your team? So maybe you need a Dietitian on your team professionally because you don't like a lot of foods. Or you have health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, prediabetes, insulin resistance. You have conditions that do require special attention to come up with a specialized or individualized food plan. And I'd tell people all the time, why haven't a physician? So if you can find an obesity medicine physician in your area, you can go on the OMA website, which would come put in the show notes also. They can help you get started. But when it comes to nutrition counseling, I'm the type of person, I like to acknowledge my limitations and my training and it helped my patients get to where they need to go. So I said doctors, we do drive-thru nutrition counseling. That's for many reasons like you know what I mean? Like you go drive-thru, we tell you a couple of days. Don’t eat carbs, don't eat sugar. But when you go to a nutritionist, they give you like a full four course meal and nutrition counseling because they can go through in detail, they have the time, go through detail and to see what it works for you, what doesn't work, and look at everything like that and come up with a very detailed plan. So I always recommend if you have a lot of barriers to things you like, dislike health condition. He should see, it starts with your physician. But definitely seeing nutritionists to help you on your team. And the team that I use, you know, as I said, I use my F so you know, faith, family, friends, if a physician or primary care provider, psychologist, dietician, you know, so a comprehensive team is important to help you with your weight journey. Dr. Berry: That's beautiful. Okay, I'm a busy mom. Right? I made the mental switch, I got my team together. I’m starting to identify what things, I will make time for it, right? Because we know the time is there, right? We've already, the mentorship has already said, but you know, time is there. So we already know what the time is there and now we're starting to identify this is, I like this exercise. I don't like this exercise. I'm going to lean towards this way over here and now we're even starting to like even say, you know what? Maybe I can eat healthy right now and I'm asking it as a little bit later as far as, especially when we talk about eating out because I always get that excuse, I am eating healthy and I'm doing everything like well how come I haven't lost my 20 pounds yet? I think that's the part of the journey that I feel like people would hit the stop sign and breaks and that's when they kind of get off. Right? Because, they, for some and again, and maybe kind of going back to having more realistic goals. Right? But they don't, right? But they don't, right? They say I haven't lost my 20 pounds and now they're back to see you because they say, Hey I did all these things and the weight's not coming off. Right? Like what do I do? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Alright. So going back to the steps, let me just reiterate one more time. So getting started. So I address obstacles and create opportunities, assemble your support team. And then the third thing is to act daily. Do something daily towards those goals that you have set. So even if you can't get your 30 minutes in one day, okay, do one minute. Because I find when it comes to mindset comes to momentum. You just got to keep going. I don't allow myself to go more than 48 hours without exercise. And because I find that that third day that's when the inertia or the laziness, that's it. And it gets harder for me to get back on my routine. I mean, unless of course, I'm sick or something like that. There've been times when I've been sick and I had to go for a week. But since it started, so that third day come hill come high water, I'm going to do some. And where there's just one minute of a plank. I view my time bank of fitness as a bank account, right. Rather than viewing it like I have to do 30 minutes each day. No, I have to get in two and a half hours this weekend. However, I get that two and a half hours is fine. So if I just do 10 minutes today, but over the weekend I can do an hour, then it's all working towards the same goal rather than see a very rigid that you have to do 30 minutes every day or something like that. So break it up how it works for you. So just something every day, maybe today I'm going to, instead of having that chocolate chip cookie at 3:00 PM, I'm going to have, make a choice and choose to just have an apple at 3:00 PM instead. So that's what it means to do it by acting daily. Now when you talk about it, and I wanted to make sure we clarify that before we shift into the weight because the weight loss part of it, because you're right, the struggle is real. So this is the way that I talked about this, which I mentioned in the first podcast, was just that, number one, we've got to think about a couple of things from evolution or hysterical, whatever you believe in and point of view. We were not made to lose weight, right? Weight has an advantage, excess weight. The reason why we have this adipose or this fat tissue is to protect this and to serve as storage for energy, to serve as the storage for food, for times of scarcity. Right? And so I always tell my patients who have obesity and they left. I hope you will too, that if we were in like caveman times or they would be queen and the king of the jungle and I would be eating like this is real, right? You have a protective advantage of where you are. But unfortunately, as we have now moved into food positive times where we don't need this extra adipose or this extra tissue to hang out as we did before, now the body is not used to getting rid of it and certainly not used to getting rid of it as quickly as possible. So we know from a lot of studies that have been done like this showed the biggest loser study came out and it showed that most of those people who lost all that weight so quickly to a very intensive process with a lot of team of people. For those people, they gain most of the weight back. And part of that, when they looked at the biology of it, their body set into motion a whole process for them to regain their weight. Like their metabolic rate slowed down. There was a release of hormones that made them hungrier, that made them not process the fat in sugar as well. So there was a lot going on for it because of the fact that they lost the weight so rapidly and how much of the weight was lost. So we know that you know, we have physiology fighting against this in many ways. And then also psychologically as you're alluding to, is just the fact that, oh, I'm not losing weight, how I feel or would the as quickly as I feel. And so then we do other things and we'd go back into old habits as well that too. So when we talk about weight loss is they're complicated, but then from a more practical perspective, so that was how the nerdy science kind of stuff and the psychological stuff. But let's be real. It took you 50 years to gain that weight. Why do you think you should lose it all on 50 days? Common guys, give us some time. (I love it.) That rapid weight loss is very traumatic for the body. It is. It is. So the body's going to say, pola, pola, pola, pola. We starving. Why are we losing so much weight? Let me slow down this process a little bit. Let me give myself time to get used to all these changes. And so you may experience what is called a weight loss plateau. Now there's controversy. Some people don't believe in it, this and that. I believe in it. I've seen it and I think the science does support it and it makes sense like your body needs time to get used to the changes that are being made. So I think during those times when you feel like the weight is not coming off as quickly as it should, that is definitely the time if you don't already have a good support system to seek it out. And again, I mean no shade to any of their specialty or profession, but I know the training that I got as I transitioned from internal medicine, so obesity medicine, I learned a lot about what to do during those times and to really about treating obesity as a disease. So that would be a great time if you are, do have access to an obesity specialist or clinician in your area to try to seek one out, to see if they can help you lose weight. Now in terms of what you should look for in one, I think that probably should be a whole another set very, because I could go on for a long time. But you do need to seek help to help you through the weight loss plateau. So that help, just in short may include dietary changes. It may include behavioral changes and it actually should include a lot of those. And then sometimes if you already optimized on all those things, especially, I'm sorry, a key one for working moms, I should say sleep. You need seven to nine hours of sleep at night to lose weight. That is because all of our natural weight burnings, that burning hormones are weight loss hormones. They are reset when we sleep and when we get into the right circadian rhythm, and that takes about seven to nine hours at night. And then also stress, you need your stress level to below. So stress management is a key part of it because people who rate their stress levels as moderate to high, on average, we weigh about 11% more than people who rate their stress levels as low. So you need to really make sure that those are in place. And then if all those things are in place, then this is when a physician or clinician may say, maybe we should do weight loss medication and there are several on the market that had been approved to help treat the disease of obesity and to help with weight loss. So that's when, and that's what we may need to almost quote unquote trick the body out of this kind of Plateau state or non-weight burning state. Dr. Berry: I love it. So after an action, what's our next of a plan or action? So we've got action, we're doing it at least a minute. I love that at least a minute because I think sometimes the moms do feel guilty. They do feel guilty, (We do.) Just couldn't get it, I wanted to and so and so happened. I know I'd be working out like I tried to work out in the mornings, but usually, my twins usually toward that, right? They wake up early, someone's got to be with the other along the way. And it's usually me. Right? So I know there are always obstacles that are in a way. So I do love that we give them an opportunity to say no, you know, it's okay. Just put it in the bank. It's not a race. We just need you to get there. We just need you to get there. Had to be the first. We just got to get you to that point every single week. And I love when I stay up. When they get to point in there the action and they're losing weight and now they're feeling good about themselves. Right? Like what? Like what do you do? How do you counsel them to stay on it, right? Because again, I love the fact that we really call it a journey, right? Because this is something that as a lifelong thing that they need to like handle it. What are some of the things that you've seen that's caused people to maybe backslide a little bit? And what are some of the tips that you have to say like to keep on going? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So the next stage in the stages of changes is maintenance, right? So you guys what, we're in action, now we just need to maintain it. You've already addressed some things. So lack of results is a key thing like you mentioned. So people who may lose that initial five to 10 pounds and get it off very quickly because it's more water weight and people in the body was ready to give that. But then you get to a place where maybe raw now five to 10% of your body weight and then your body kinda plateau or as not losing as quickly. So people get discouraged and the negativity sets in. I think it's very important then to again, tap into your team and figure out what's going on. That's the time to make their appointment with someone that's to talk to your friends who are on the journey with you. Those people who are going to support you, your family, your faith, those things to keep you on the journey. And that's the glue that's kind of keeping you going during those times when you may feel discouraged on your own. Because everybody will feel that way. I think number one, again, a mindset shift is just knowing that this plateau or this lack of results as part of the journey. Number two, knowing that it's a constant journey. So you mentioned something very common, like yeah, I have the five months old now. She often wakes up, but if you follow my Instagram stories, you'll see her in that video with me. Right? So that means maybe I have plans to go out for a run that morning, but she woke up. So now we may be doing a carry fit or like a baby carrier exercise instead. And I'm just lifting weights with her or, you know if she won't let me put her down or I'll put her in a thing and exercise in the swinger or something. So you know, knowing that it's going to be constantly something. Something will always be there. That's the other mindset struggles. Not just because, okay, I've declared this thing and I'm going to do it. That is going to be quote-unquote easy. It's not going to be easy. There were always been some barrier there, but you get better at figuring out how can I navigate around that? So that's why I say mindset is so important because that's what's going to help you to maintain and continue the weight journey. So now that you've lost the weight or a year in the process of losing the weight continuance to go, and so that's how I know in the office and in the clinical setting how I support my patients. So number one, showing up, right? Sometimes you have a tendency to hide when you haven't reached the goal or the goal is not going the way you want. Don't hide, still, show up. Come to your appointment. Call your friend, call your trainer and I'm so sorry my fitness trainer friends are going to be so mad at me. Yes, fitness trainers, they're been important. You know, I'm more like individual because my exercise is more of my me time. But definitely if you struggle with being alone or working out alone, get a trainer, get someone to help you. And I'm actually going to get a trainer later on this year too because they can help you get to that next level of fitness that you want to get to or you need to get to. So yes tapping into the resources you need, show up using your team and still continually reevaluating what is working, what isn't working and knowing that you needed, you're going to need to change. Like I can't tell you how many times I would come to feel like I was finally in a group with especially fitness and I focused on fitness. But the food, of course, is the number one thing for weight loss. But fitness helps them so much. So I would get my fitness schedule down and then my husband's work schedule would change and I'd be like dad, waking up baby. And so, you know, it's always going to be something. I think that's what I've learned and that's life, right? There's always going to be something. But your ability to adapt, which probably it could still see as we talk. It helps out so much. Right. I just added a fourth A so I had a sense and assemble. I had act now I have, did I just already forget it? This is the sleep deprivation can get but no, but yeah, I just added a fourth A to it though. So you have assessed, you have, so you acknowledging those barriers. You had to assemble your team, you have acting daily and then assess. So constantly reassessing what needs to change, what you need help with that so important. Dr. Berry: I love it. Before we get you out of here, again amazing teaching education and I know obviously we talked about the moms, of course, busy dads. I know y'all out there clearly, but we got to talk about the moms because you know, we know how hard they work. Before we let you get out of here. Right? Like what I need you to tell everyone, like again, we've talked about before, how can they get in touch with you, teach you, learn from you. What is out there that they can kind of consume cause I think, uh, you know, they're going to listen to this and then go back and listen to episode 93 and then be like, wow, this is the person that I need to follow. How can they follow and learn and continue to kind of even follow your journey that you're still on as we speak. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Yeah. Well definitely through social media. I have a website that is drsylviagbollie.com. I also am very active on Facebook. I do weekly live postings where I teach on different topics and I'm committed to trying to do those weekly now. I also post regularly on Twitter, on Instagram, just to keep us all motivated on our fitness journey. And that's my main goal, just showing real-life examples of trying to fit into in fitness and fit in healthy eating and so busy lifestyles, especially as a working mom. So there's social media is the best way. Dr. Berry: Okay. So I ask all my guests on the podcast, how is what you do helping to empower busy moms across the world empowered themselves for better health? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: I think what I'm doing is helping busy moms across the world because I'm empowering us to just be ourselves and work within those confines would be in ourselves. Work within that rather than trying to fit any mold, fit any model and putting yourself on there. Like you mentioned a lot of guilt, a lot of pressure. Like I, my goal and how I hope to help all of us is to just help us realize that number one, it's possible to fit in fitness. It’s possible to fit in healthy eating. And it doesn't have to be the way that anyone else does it, but in a way that works best for you. Dr. Berry: Love it, love it. Again, Lunch and Learn community, I want to thank that Dr. Bollie for coming on the second time and dropping even more gems. And she did the first time and you know, blessing us, educating us, and really getting this right and together, especially for the busy moms out there. I know a lot of them are. I know a lot of them in the Lunch and Learn community who are starving freedom. So I like this. So again, thank you for joining the show today. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Thanks. Bye. Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.