Podcast appearances and mentions of tim all

In today's episode of The Milk Check, we're joined by Tim the Dairy Farmer, a farmer, speaker and ag comedian. If you think dairy farming is no laughing matter, then you haven't met Tim. Tune in for a special episode of the podcast, where Tim and the Jacoby team discuss: Strong harvest likely leading to lower feed prices Could dairy heifer prices rival Black Angus prices in the near(ish) future? Could the milk price reach $30? Things you should never plan near the cow pasture Plus, learn how Tim got into the comedy biz and how he silences the hecklers. Don't miss this episode of The Milk Check with Tim the Dairy Farmer. Intro audio (with music): Welcome to the Milk Check, a TC Jacoby & Co podcast where we share market insights and analysis with dairy farmers in mind. Ted Jacoby II (T3): Welcome, everybody, to the Milk Check. This month we've got a very special episode, we have a special guest, Tim the Dairy Farmer is with us today. Tim is going to ask us what we think is going on with these dairy markets, and we're going to do our best to give him an answer, and we'll see where the conversation goes from there. Tim, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Tim the Dairy Farmer: I've been in the dairy business for 30-something years, taken my licks, started doing standup comedy as Tim the Dairy Farmer about 22 years ago, and I speak at agriculture events. I'm a standup comedian, I'm not a motivational speaker. I'm horrible at marketing myself there, Ted. So basically I'm a dairy farmer that does standup comedy, and they hire me to come to meetings, to wake up after guys like you talk. And here's another thing, this podcast is called the Milk Check, correct? T3: Yes. Tim: All right. This is how you know I'm a dairy farmer, y'all call it the Milk Check, I'm just happy my last milk check had a comma. T3: Well, that's why we call it the Milk Check, because we want to talk a little bit about markets and what's affected dairy farmers' milk checks. Hopefully most dairy farmers do have a comma right now because prices are halfway decent. But before we go to markets, Tim, I've got to ask, tell me about one of the most interesting agricultural events that you participated in. I'd love to hear a good story. Tim: Oh, man. I've got so many. It's not the good ones that you remember, it's the horrible ones. There's three shows, there's the one you planned to do, the one you do, and the one you wish on the drive home that you would have done. I've had all kinds of stuff go wrong. No, for the most part they're always fun. T3: All right. Josh White: So Tim, how often are you on the farm versus having to hit the road for comedy? Tim: I probably go off and do 30, 35 shows a year. Normally I fly out the night before and I'm back the day after. My brother's always been my biggest supporter, he covers while I'm gone. I couldn't have made it this far doing comedy without my brother's support, because we're partners in the dairy and he's always covered for me when I'm gone. T3: Where is the dairy located, Tim? Tim: Central Florida. We're actually over between Fort Myers and Tampa, where all the elderly people go to pass away, you take a right and that's where we're at. T3: When that hurricane came through Fort Myers last year, that affect you guys at all? Tim: No, it affected a few of my buddies. Nobody lost any cows, but barns were just crinkled up like aluminum foil and tossed around. I think over the years I've lost three barns to hurricanes. T3: Oh, really? Tim: Yeah. They tell you how it's rated for 80 mile an hour or whatever, and then when the tornado or the hurricane comes through it wads it up like a piece of paper and chucks it 100 yards. You're like, "Well, that wasn't rated right." Anyway. Go ahead, this is your podcast. T3: Tim, if you have a question to get the market discussion started, why don't you go ahead and shoot?

In today's episode of The Milk Check, we're joined by Tim the Dairy Farmer, a farmer, speaker and ag comedian. If you think dairy farming is no laughing matter, then you haven't met Tim. Tune in for a special episode of the podcast, where Tim and the Jacoby team discuss: Strong harvest likely leading to lower feed prices Could dairy heifer prices rival Black Angus prices in the near(ish) future? Could the milk price reach $30? Things you should never plan near the cow pasture Plus, learn how Tim got into the comedy biz and how he silences the hecklers. Don't miss this episode of The Milk Check with Tim the Dairy Farmer. Intro audio (with music): Welcome to the Milk Check, a TC Jacoby & Co podcast where we share market insights and analysis with dairy farmers in mind. Ted Jacoby II (T3): Welcome, everybody, to the Milk Check. This month we've got a very special episode, we have a special guest, Tim the Dairy Farmer is with us today. Tim is going to ask us what we think is going on with these dairy markets, and we're going to do our best to give him an answer, and we'll see where the conversation goes from there. Tim, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Tim the Dairy Farmer: I've been in the dairy business for 30-something years, taken my licks, started doing standup comedy as Tim the Dairy Farmer about 22 years ago, and I speak at agriculture events. I'm a standup comedian, I'm not a motivational speaker. I'm horrible at marketing myself there, Ted. So basically I'm a dairy farmer that does standup comedy, and they hire me to come to meetings, to wake up after guys like you talk. And here's another thing, this podcast is called the Milk Check, correct? T3: Yes. Tim: All right. This is how you know I'm a dairy farmer, y'all call it the Milk Check, I'm just happy my last milk check had a comma. T3: Well, that's why we call it the Milk Check, because we want to talk a little bit about markets and what's affected dairy farmers' milk checks. Hopefully most dairy farmers do have a comma right now because prices are halfway decent. But before we go to markets, Tim, I've got to ask, tell me about one of the most interesting agricultural events that you participated in. I'd love to hear a good story. Tim: Oh, man. I've got so many. It's not the good ones that you remember, it's the horrible ones. There's three shows, there's the one you planned to do, the one you do, and the one you wish on the drive home that you would have done. I've had all kinds of stuff go wrong. No, for the most part they're always fun. T3: All right. Josh White: So Tim, how often are you on the farm versus having to hit the road for comedy? Tim: I probably go off and do 30, 35 shows a year. Normally I fly out the night before and I'm back the day after. My brother's always been my biggest supporter, he covers while I'm gone. I couldn't have made it this far doing comedy without my brother's support, because we're partners in the dairy and he's always covered for me when I'm gone. T3: Where is the dairy located, Tim? Tim: Central Florida. We're actually over between Fort Myers and Tampa, where all the elderly people go to pass away, you take a right and that's where we're at. T3: When that hurricane came through Fort Myers last year, that affect you guys at all? Tim: No, it affected a few of my buddies. Nobody lost any cows, but barns were just crinkled up like aluminum foil and tossed around. I think over the years I've lost three barns to hurricanes. T3: Oh, really? Tim: Yeah. They tell you how it's rated for 80 mile an hour or whatever, and then when the tornado or the hurricane comes through it wads it up like a piece of paper and chucks it 100 yards. You're like, "Well, that wasn't rated right." Anyway. Go ahead, this is your podcast. T3: Tim, if you have a question to get the market discussion started, why don't you go ahead and shoot?

Sit down with Jonathan Youssef for a compelling conversation with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, authors of The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is. Why It's Destructive. How to Respond. This discussion examines the pervasive and unsettling movement of faith deconstruction sweeping churches today. Whether it's affecting your loved ones, straining relationships, or stirring doubts within you, this episode provides crucial understanding and guidance.Together, we will try to understand the core aspects of the Christian deconstruction movement, its origins, the meaning of deconstruction hashtags like #exvangelical, and why it attracts so many people, particularly those disenchanted with traditional church teachings.Alisa and Tim offer strategies for thoughtfully and empathetically engaging with those questioning or abandoning their faith in Christ, emphasizing responses grounded in a biblical worldview.Whether you are seeking to support a loved one in turmoil, understand the dramatic spiritual changes around you, or find answers to your spiritual doubts, Alisa and Tim provide valuable insights and answers that promise to enlighten, challenge, and encourage.Listen and gain tools and confidence to address deconstruction with clarity and love, ensuring your faith and relationships can withstand the challenges of these transformative times.ALISA CHILDERS is a popular speaker and the author of Another Gospel? and Live Your Truth and Other Lies. She has been published at the Gospel Coalition, Crosswalk, the Stream, For Every Mom, Decision magazine, and the Christian Post.TIM BARNETT is a speaker and apologist for Stand to Reason (STR). His online presence on Red Pen Logic with Mr. B helps people assess flawed thinking using good thinking, reaching millions monthly through multiple social media platforms.After you listen to this episode, you may have questions. We would love to hear from you! To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/CandidAlso, join the conversation on our social media pages:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpodTwitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpodTRANSCRIPT:This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 246: The Deconstruction of Christianity with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett.Jonathan: Today, we have quite a special situation. We have two of my favorite guests that we've had in the past, Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett. And they have teamed up and have written a book together, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It's Destructive and How To Respond. Thank you guys so much for taking the time. We're all across the nation and different nations here. Thank y'all for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.Alisa: It's great to be back with you.Tim: Yeah, it's good to see you.Jonathan: Well, I think before we jump in we've Alisa and I and Tim and I, we've separately had conversations around this area, but I love the way you break down your book into these three parts: Exvangelical, Deconstruction, and Hope. But just again for those who are new to the terminology, let's define deconstruction and separate it and define exvangelical, and then we'll talk about the reasons for the writing of the book.Alisa: Which one you want to take, Tim, exvangelical or deconstruction?Jonathan: You each get one.Tim: All right. I'll start with deconstruction. You know this is a tough definition to nail down. In fact, this took quite some research and quite some time. In fact, I actually changed my mind on how I was using the term. At least initially when I started teaching in deconstruction a few years ago, I thought there was a way that we could use the word deconstruction in a healthy way and there was a way we could use it in an unhealthy way. And we were seeing this kind of thing happening, especially on social media. You'd have people like Lecrae or John Mark Holmer or other notable evangelicals using deconstruction as a healthy way, here's a good way to do deconstruction.Tim: That's right. And on the other hand, there's a whole lot of this other stuff that's very unhealthy. That's how we originally thought until we did serious research into what's going on in this deconstruction space, especially on social media where we're seeing a movement or an explosion. And what we saw there was that there isn't anything healthy. In fact, there are defining characteristics of the deconstruction explosion that are unbiblical and just completely wrongheaded.So at the end of the day, where we landed on this—and again, we say this is the hardest sentence we wrote in the book, but here's where we landed on our definition of deconstruction: It's a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without requiring Scripture as a standard. And all those words are important in that sentence. So it's a process, but it's a very specific kind of process. It's a postmodern process. Whereas where you would think (this is what many claim) is that they are on a search for truth, what we're finding is that it's not really about truth—in fact, by postmodern we mean that there isn't a goal of truth; there's actually a denial of objective truth, that objective truth cannot be known. And so there's that on the one hand. On the other hand, you have this rejection of Scripture as an authority. And so when we put those things together, we think these are the defining characteristics of what deconstruction is all about. And we can kind of go into more detail and give some examples of where we've seen that, but that's a starting point.Alisa: Right and then the exvangelical hashtag is often used synonymously with and at least in conjunction with that deconstruction hashtag. And it's a little bit of a tricky hashtag because it doesn't simply mean, at face value, no longer evangelical. But it's not like you have people who were raised Presbyterian and they become some kind of more liturgical Anglican or something and they use the ex. They are not using the exvangelical hashtag for that. What we're seeing with the exvangelical hashtag is that, first of all, it's very difficult to define what evangelical is. And that's kind of a word like deconstruction that's defined in a hundred different ways. So there's the Bevington's Quadrilateral that characterizes the evangelical movement under four pillars of personal conversion, emphasis on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, biblical authority, and evangelism. And yet, if you ask people in the deconstruction hashtag what is evangelical, those beliefs are in the background for sure, but what they primarily see is God, guns and Trump. It's what is perceived in their minds to be this unholy alliance between evangelicals and the political right. And so it's all kind of mashed together, along with things like spiritual abuse and purity culture and conservative politics. It's all kind of this ball that all gets kind of mixed together and then it all gets thrown out as exvangelical. And so in some cases they're conflating evangelical with the historic Christian gospel, and in other cases, they might actually be throwing out some cultural things that are Americanized that aren't necessarily a part of the gospel. And it can be kind of like a mix of both. But it's important like when Tim talked about the shift of authority, its' like the only thing that matters for the exvangelical and deconstruction is that they are leaving behind what they perceive to be toxic beliefs. And so as best as I can analyze are it's any belief outside of yourself that you would be asked to submit to, surrender to, kneel to that is not necessarily something that resonates with you inside.Jonathan: Interesting. So you're the ultimate authority, which goes to the deconstruction definition of Scripture being the authority.Alisa: I do think it boils down to that, yes. Jonathan: Do you find this is a uniquely American phenomenon? I don't even know if phenomenon is the right word to use there.Tim: That's a really good question. I think that there's a few reasons why we're seeing this in particular in North America. It's happening in Canada, too, not just the U.S. I think that we're seeing a culture that's dominated by a philosophy of relativism on the one hand and then on the other you have this kind of explosion of social media within the last decade or so. And I think bringing those two things together in particular—And then maybe a third thing, and that is the American church and how we have, I think, neglected the life of the Christian mind. We used to say the church teaches what we believe really well but not why we believe it. So us apologists, we're trying to train up the church in why we believe these things. But to be honest, when you look at the research now that's coming out in the last couple of years, people who identify as evangelical, I think it was in our book we say 42 or 43 percent of U.S., so Americans, who identify as evangelical do not believe that Jesus is god. They think He's just a good moral teacher. Hold on a second! So these people identify as evangelical but they're not Christian. I mean, this is crazy! So you have, on the one hand, Christians, people who are professing to be Christians because, hey, I was born in America or I was born in Canada. That's the default, right. It's like in your genetics or something. Yeah, so you have that on the one hand, so there's no real understanding or foundation for what real, orthodox Christianity is. Then you have this dominant culture, I mean, it's coming from every direction, this idea of relativism. It's literally the water that many of your young people especially are swimming in, and they don't even know they're wet. And then of course you have social media, this platform now, where I have access to, I mean, the world. I have access to memes and TikToks and these, for many, they think these are compelling arguments. I can't tell you how many times I'm sitting here at my desk and I get a message coming in. It's a meme or a TikTok video that someone sends me and says, “Hey, can you respond to this? I don't know what to say. I don't know how to respond.”And I watch the video or I read the meme and I think, Really? This is not a good argument. It's not even close. Usually, it's not even an argument. And so when you bring all those things together, I think that makes America susceptible to the deconstruction movement for sure.Alisa: there's also the Trump element in the American version of deconstruction. It's just such a huge part of that that is so uniquely American. But as Tim said, I think deconstruction is happening everywhere. I know progressive Christianity is happening. Even in the Middle East I've gotten emails of people wanting my book to be translated into Farsi because it's even coming into the Middle East. So where there is progressive Christianity, there is dn. But I suppose it's just taking on maybe a different type of flavor here in America.Jonathan: Well, and even the Trump effect has ripple effects around the world to where people in foreign nations see Trump and think, Oh, well, he's their definition of Christian. Let's talk about the prevalence. Because I think there are some who think this is just happening out in large cities or this is not affecting everyday people. There can be a disconnect to just how much influence this is having. And it can be people who are watching and consuming these things that aren't even talking about it with their family because they know how the family will react when there's genuine questions and doubt. So tell us a little bit about what you're seeing with the prevalence of both of these concepts entering into homes.Alisa: Well, I think we're in a different world now, so this is an interesting anecdotal piece to this. When I go out and speak I'll often ask an audience, “How many of you have heard the word deconstruction in the context of faith?” And the older the audience, the fewer the people have even heard of it. And yet, when I go speak to students it's 90 percent. But it blows my mind. Even at women's conferences where women … the ages are 20 to maybe 60, 70, you might have 20 percent raise their hand that they've even heard of the concept.And so what I mean by we're in a different world is decades ago you had to get a book deal. There was major exposure with ideas. And so I think that there are some of us who are still living in that world and don't realize the prevalence of some of these ideas on social media. For example, we have many posts documented in our book where it's somebody that nobody's ever heard of an probably never will know their name, but their video has millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and if you think about the reach of that versus somebody that you might have seen on TV decades ago or maybe in a Christian bookstore even or in the catalog that they would send out, that's a lot of people. But social media can reach so many people with a message where it's not even necessarily surrounding a particular personality.And so I think the prevalence of it is on social media, so someone's exposure to it is probably going to be directly related to what types of social media they have and how often they engaging with it. Tim: And the other element to this, the older folks who have exposure to it, is because they have a loved one, usually a younger loved one, who is going through it and now we're just, as we label it, this is what it is, deconstruction, they say—it clicks. Oh, that's what my nephew is going through, or my grandchild or my son or my daughter or whatever. So it does kind of filter up to that older generation. They're seeing the aftermath usually. It's like why is my grandson no longer following the Lord? Well, it turns out they went through a process called deconstruction. Jonathan: Well, and I imagine some of the reactions can be unhelpful, and that's why, again, I think it's important that books like yours are out there and podcasts and stuff that you guys are producing is out there, so that there's a heightened awareness but also a helpful response. Because we do have a response and a calling, but we need to make sure we're doing it in a right and biblical way.I wonder if we could come to the origins of this. I know Carl Lawson writes in the foreword in your book about technically the beginning is, when Demas, who fell in love with the world, abandoned Paul and the ministry and the faith. But I mean in this particular area, is it with social media? Was there a particular person or is it just postmodernism in general? Where do you find your origins to these movements?Tim: Well, it's true that we could trace this thing past Demas. We can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, always. But just more recently in the 1960s we see postmodern philosophers like Derrida in particular, who is the father of deconstruction. Now of course, his application of deconstruction was to textbook religion. He argued that objective meaning, objective truth, could not be known, and that there was no actual truth, so the reader could import just as much meaning as an author of a text. And what we traced in our research is we saw there is a connection here. In fact, we discovered a book by John Caputo, who is a scholar and actually follows Derrida and applies Derrida's philosophy not just to textbook religion in general, but in fact, to Christianity. And he wants to do this postmodern move even on the words of Jesus. And so he gives application in his book. What would Jesus think about, say, homosexuality today? Well, He would look around the world and see loving, monogamous relationships and He would be affirming. Even though Derrida says, yet, in the first century, no, Paul and Jesus, they had a certain view on this, but we're going to bring new meaning to the text. In fact, the way Derrida describes this is Derrida says the text actually never arrives at a meaning. In fact, he has this analogy of a postman delivering a letter, and it's like the letter never arrives at its destination, and in that sense, Christianity has not arrived. There is no set fundamental beliefs that you need to hold to—in fact, they are always changing, never arriving.So this is kind of the history, and of course there's lots of people who don't know who Derrida is, they don't know who John Caputo is, and yet, they are taking a page out of his playbook. They are thinking in terms of that kind of postmodern philosophy as they look out at religion. It's not what is actually true corresponds to reality; instead, it's there is something else going on. Oftentimes, it's personal preferences are the authority, or maybe they're looking at the culture and saying, “Yeah, look, the culture is more accepting of sexuality and so we ought to be too.”Jonathan: Yeah, just like in the days of Noah. Help us understand who are some of the primary voices behind this today? I know we talked about how when you're on social media it can be a lot of nameless, faceless people who just have an opinion and they want to create an argument or a non-argument that has an effect on people with their emotions. Are there any that are writing or have some influence as, you know, even by way of warning people, hey, be careful of so-and-so because it tends towards this trajectory?[24:42] Alisa: Well, I would say there's, in my mind, and Tim might have some others, but in my mind there's one figure in particular that is, in my view, the most influential, although he's not primarily promoting quote/unquote “deconstruction,” is Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr, his ideas, his universal Christ worldview, is—Interestingly, when I was researching the coaching and therapy sites, I found all the ones I could find online of people offering services to coach you through deconstruction or even offer you therapy through your deconstruction—and by the way, these therapy and coaching sites are not helping you to remain a Christian; they are not interested in where you land, they just want to help you along your subjective journey.But even the ones that aren't claiming to be Christians, there's always this recommendation—I looked at all the book recommendations, and there is a Richard Rohr book there every single time, even among those that don't claim to be Christians. And so what Rohr has done, I think, is, especially among people who want to retain the title Christian but might be more spiritual but not religious, or some sort of a New Age-y kind of Jesus is more of a mascot kind of thing, Rohr has really given them a worldview to put in place of what they've turned down. And he does talk about deconstruction in his book, Universal Christ, and he says it's like the process of order, disorder, and then reorder. Well, that sounds good at face value. You're taught a certain thing, and then something messes it up and as an adult you have to do some digging and some work and then you reorder. But that's not exactly what he's talking about. His order stage is what he calls “private salvation,” your private salvation project. In other words, Rohr doesn't believe in personal salvation, he believes in universal salvation, he's a universalist. So he's saying that's like the kindergarten version of faith, this kind of Christianity where you have personal faith and you have this God of wrath and judgment. All of that just needs to be disordered so that ultimately you can reorder according to his worldview.Now I bring up Rohr because he's so influential. I mean, he makes his way into so many of the deconstruction conversations. But beyond Rohr, it's tough because there can be platforms that swell up and get really big, and then I've seen them shut down after they have maybe 20,000, 30,000 followers, even up to hundreds of thousands of followers. I've seen several of these platforms just kind of get burned out and they shut down. So it's hard to say, but I would say Derek Webb, Caedmon's Call, is an important voice in there. You've got—Well, Jon Steingard was for a while when he ended up shutting down his YouTube, but he was the lead singer of Hawk Nelson. He was commenting for quite a while. Jo Luehmann is pretty influential. Who else, Tim?Tim: Well, there's—I put them in different categories.Alisa: The NakedPastor.Tim: The NakedPastor for sure. So there's guys who, and gals who have deconstructed and posted that they've deconstructed online. So that would be someone like a Rhett McLaughlin, who 3 million people watched his video four years ago. He's been keeping people updated every year; they do kind of an anniversary thing. That sparked so many people on their own deconstruction. Now what's interesting about Rhett is he didn't necessarily tell you how toTim: Yeah. And that was enough for some people to say, “Maybe I should do this too.” Now there's other platforms out there, and all they do is criticize Christianity, or they mock Christianity. Those are big on TikTok. I mean, there are massive platforms that have half a million followers and millions of views, okay, and I could go down and list some of those for you. But the point is they're not necessarily talking about deconstruction and the process, but they're just saying, “Hey, here's what you guys believe, but here's my mocking, here's my criticism.” Then there's this other stream, and this is the NakedPastor or Jo Luehmann and others who aren't just mocking Christianity or criticizing Christianity but they're trying to advocate for a certain kind of process, okay, and that's where you're going to get a little more detail on how this deconstruction thing works out. And so they've been, in fact, Jo Luehmann and the NakedPastor, David Hayward, and—Jonathan: Joshua Harris. Didn't he do a course through that?Tim: That's right. Joshua Harris, when he—again, on Instagram. That blew up. There were like 7,000 comments in response to him just posting, “I'm no longer a Christian.” And you could see the responses, and I'm telling you, there were many who said, “This post is what set me on my deconstruction journey.” So there's at least three different categories of influencers out there, and they're all playing into the same thing, deconstruction, but they all are coming at it from a different angle.Jonathan: Alisa, for those who are familiar with your story, how is this movement different from the path that you were on?Alisa: This is a great question because I've actually changed my mind on how I talk about this. So over ten years ago I had a faith crisis that was really agonizing. It was years long. I landed fairly quickly in going through some apologetics arguments, knowing that God existed, but just the doubts that would nag at me were just years of this agonizing research, reading thousands of pages of scholarship, just trying to figure out if what I believed was actually true. And it was propelled by a progressive pastor. I didn't know he was progressive at the time, but I was in a church where there was this class going on and it set my friends, a bunch of my friends, into deconstruction. And so when I wrote my first book about my journey, I actually called the process that I went through deconstruction because it was horrible, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It was agonizing and I had to kind of de-con-struct. If you just take the word at face value, and then build back from the beginning.But interestingly, when I would go online and I would talk about my deconstruction, deconstructionists would come on and say, “No, you didn't deconstruct.” At first, that was so confusing to me. I was like, “Well, were you there?” I mean, it was like this horrible, agonizing process.Jonathan: I'm the ultimate authority here.Alisa: Yeah, right, I know. And they said, “Well, you didn't deconstruct because you still hold to toxic theology. You still have toxic theological beliefs.” And that's when I realized, oh, okay, so this isn't just—even though I knew it wasn't a good thing, I knew it was a horrible thing because, again, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, but it wasn't about truth. It's actually about leaving behind these beliefs that they think are toxic. And let's say you completely do hard work of years of studying and you decide that you are a sinner and that Jesus did die on the cross for your sins, that the Bible is God's Word and that what Jesus claimed about Himself is true and that He proved it by resurrecting from the dead, if you hold to those beliefs, along with the biblical sexual ethic, you have toxic theology and you've got to go back to the drawing board and start over.So that's when I realized, okay, there's more to this. And so I actually correct myself—Jonathan: There's a goal.Alisa: Yeah. I correct myself in the new book and say I don't actually use the language of deconstruction to describe what I went through because I was on a truth quest. I wanted to know what was true, whether I liked it or not, whether it resonated with me or not. In fact, what was interesting in the class I was in where all my friends ended up deconstructing, and I mean all that I know of, there might be two that I lost touch with that maybe didn't, but most of the people that I know of did. And everything in that class was all about what resonates with me. I mean, we would … they would talk about Bible verses and say, “Well, that just doesn't resonate with me,” and they would toss it aside. And I was like, “You can't just do that.”And so I didn't deconstruct, and so I corrected my language on that and really changed my mind about what I think it is. And I think what I'm hoping to set the example for others is people who are wanting to use the word because it was trendy—because I really had a thing about that. Why am I using the word? Why am I hanging onto the word? And I had to realize there's no reason for me to use that word. Because what I did was search for truth. I tested all things, held fast to what is good—that's biblical. I don't need a postmodern word to describe that. And so that would be my journey with this word and kind of my relationship with it is that I've changed my mind; I didn't deconstruct. It was—Jonathan: You re-entrenched.Alisa: Yeah, they just think I circled some wagons and found some people to agree with me. Which is so interesting to me, because they weren't there. And that's the thing. Pete Ens, I've seen the comment from him, “Oh, Alisa doesn't know … she doesn't understand deconstruction, she doesn't get it.”And I'm just like, “Were you there? You weren't there. You have no idea what I went through.” But it's like they're so quick to say, “You have to respect my lived experience,” but they are the first ones that will not respect your lived experience if you land at historic Christianity for sure.Jonathan: That makes sense. You guys have spent hours on places like TikTok researching what leads people to deconstruct and what they all have in common. What are the common threads that you've noticed through that?Tim: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, some of the factors that we've noticed that kind of launch people into a deconstruction are things like doubts, unanswered questions. Virtually all these stories have some instance of suffering or pain, and we've all been through that. There's church hurt, there's spiritual abuse. Now we've got to be careful about that a little bit, because sometimes it's a real abuse that happens, of course, we would all want to say that is horrible and we stand against that. That is not of God. And so when a pastor engaged in that kind of thing, he needs to be held accountable for it.But then on the other hand there is what we might call perceived abuse or perceived harm. And this is where things like teaching the doctrine of hell. In our research, we found that that's called, you know, teaching your kids, it's child abuse. If you say that Jesus died for your sins, that's considered toxic and abusive to tell someone that, yet that's the gospel message. So we want to make sure that we distinguish between those things.Of course, we just mentioned earlier about politics and Trump and all that stuff. So there's these different elements that you'll see peppered within these stories. Now we want to be quick to say that not all deconstruction stories are alike. In fact, they are often very unique, and that's because every single person is unique. So if you've heard one deconstruction story, then you've only heard one, you haven't heard them all. But there are these common threads.One question that we asked when we were doing our research is why is it that two people can grow up in the same house, they can go to the same church, the same youth group, they have the same parents, they experience some of the same trauma, suffering, whatever, and yet one will deconstruct and the other maybe becomes an even more faithful believer. What's going on there?And what we found is it comes down to—at least one element—a faith foundation. What is it, what is your faith foundation? And of course, this is going to be different for different people, and what we need to be asking, we're challenging the church to ask, is what does it mean to be a Christian? Oftentimes, you know—and this is a question I was asked when I was in university by my friends who were not believers, “Tim, why are you a Christian?” And I honestly shot back, “Because my parents are Christians.” That was my first response. I knew that ain't right. That was embarrassing. I'd grown up in the church. I'd done all the church stuff, and yet I did not have a strong Christian foundation and a strong Christian faith. And so I, at that point, was very susceptible to this kind of deconstruction, right, because I could—if TikTok was big at that time, I could have watched a video and, “Okay, I'm outta here. This has been refuted.”So I think that all those things that I mentioned earlier can make you a good candidate for deconstruction, but they don't have to lead you down the path of deconstruction. This is why it's really, really important that the church needs to be helping to develop and disciple Christians so they have a strong foundation so when that crisis hits, they are able to stand firm in their faith. So let me ask this question. There may be a simple answer. Is the faulty foundations that people are building on essentially, I mean, is the answer anything but Christ? Is it in the institution of the church or in the leadership in the church or your favorite Christian singer? Is it … do you find those the main threads that came back?Alisa: That's an interesting question. I think, you know, when I think about foundation … Because I was trying to think through this question even within my own context. So one of my sisters was not a Christian until she was an adult, and she would say that openly; that's part of her testimony. She grew up in church. We grew up in the same home, we had the same discipleship, the same youth pastors, pretty much the same experiences growing up, same environment, and yet our foundation was different because I was a devoted Christian as far back as I can remember. I mean, I don't even remember a time where I didn't absolutely know that the Bible was God's Word and Jesus was who He said He was. And yet, for my sister, she grew up in the same environment but had a totally different foundation. she did all the things, she cooperated with it, but She never personally trusted in Christ.Jonathan: Going through the motions, yeah, okay.Alisa: Yeah. And she may not have even realized that. You might have asked her at 12 years old, “Are you a Christian,” she might have said, “Well, yeah,” but she didn't know that she wasn't until she actually got saved as an adult. And so I think the foundation is more of a personal thing. The way I see it is the level of understanding you  might have had. We have a lot of this sort of seeker-sensitive model that's over the past few decades has gotten really big. I'm not saying it's wrong to have a large church or try to be sensitive to people who are seeking, of course. But some of those seeker-sensitive and megachurch models really watered-down the gospel, really sacrificed discipleship for numbers. And I think that that has resulted in a lot of people growing up in churches that maybe—And I'm not … We don't speculate on this question in the book, were they really saved, were they not because we don't know the end of their story either, but I do think even right now we have a lot of people in our churches who maybe may not be Christians because they may not be getting the gospel, they're not getting Bible teaching. And they might like the community and even like and believe certain things about it, but everybody's foundation is maybe going to be a little bit different. That's kind of how I see it.Jonathan: Well, I mean, not to steer us theologically, but I mean it has to be the work of the Spirit in the life of a person, and that's all in the sovereign timing of the Lord. I wonder if sometimes in this American evangelical mindset from an older-generation perspective we have this understanding that my children should be Christians and they should be following the ways that I direct. And then I should start seeing spiritual fruit in their life. Like, well, I don't know. I mean, is there something wrong with that happening at a later point? Just thinking from a parental, a parent's perspective. Maybe I've gone into the weeds there a little bit.Alisa: Like Tim said, each deconstruction story is unique. I would say it like this. Every deconstruction story is unique and yet they're kind of all the same, too, in certain points. I know we're getting in the weeds a little bit, but as a parent, I wouldn't want to push my kid to say they believe something they don't really believe. I'd want them to come to that on their own. And that might come later, certainly, yeah.Jonathan: And there's a level of you want your child to be honest with you, and I think sometimes we can put a false expectation on your child to be going to be at a certain place when they're just not ready for that yet. And so what they're actually deconstructing is deconstructing whatever that false view—again, as you said, there's different stories of deconstruction. But ultimately, if you deconstruct and never return back, to your point, there was never faith to begin with. You experienced the benefits of a covenant community or whatever it is. As Hebrews says, you were tasting but you weren't of that, you know … not all Israel is Israel.Do you think it's potentially because parents are unwilling to engage in the hard questions of the faith? Or do you think perhaps there is always just people who are going to rebel against Christ? Is it all of the above? In your research, I don't know if you're working with people who have gone through it and then interviewing them. Are you tracing things back to a particular point? I think we all want to say, “Where does the blame lie?” Are you finding that?Tim: I think it's all of the above. A lot of these stories have unanswered questions. In fact, Alisa did a debate on Unbelievable with Lisa Gunger, and she makes this really tragic statement where she said, “Questioning was equivalent to sinning in our church. If you questioned the pastor, you questioned his teaching, whatever, you were in essence sinning.”So confessing to your questions is confessing your sins. And that mentality, I mean, we wrote a whole chapter called “Questions,” In that chapter, what we're trying to do is a little bit of a wake-up call. We're trying to rattle the church a little bit and say, “Hey, we can do better. We ought to be the place where people feel safe to ask their questions and express their doubts.” And I hope that everyone listening to this hears that. Tim and Alisa are not against questions—in fact, we're apologists. We travel around and we're doing our best to answer questions, so we're not against that, and we want the church to be a safe place.And I mean we give an example of Tim Keller. At the end of his sermons, his services, he would do like a 40-, 45-minute Q&A time where he would just stick around and, okay, come on up. And in New York City, where you have like diversity of people, diversity of views coming in, you're going to have skeptics, you're going to have atheists, you're going to have whatever coming in, asking their hard questions. And when you think about it, the way we have our churches structured, at least most of them, there isn't really a Q&A time. That would be like a very special thing. Maybe every few months the pastor will take questions or something. Jonathan: A special treat. Yeah, yeah.Tim: That's right. But for the most part, that's not there, and that can give a lot of people the impression that questions aren't allowed here. You just listen to what's spoken, do what you're told, and that's the end of it. So I think that's part of it. But you also mentioned, yeah, maybe there's a rebellious heart, too. You can't read the Bible very far without seeing someone who has a rebellious heart. So we—Tim: That's right. Just a couple of pages in. And so you end up seeing that this is a realistic element that we need to be talking about, too, and that's why we devoted an entire chapter to the deconstructor, because there are things about the deconstructor that are important to be aware of from a biblical anthropology perspective. And so there certainly are people who are seeking answers, and we want to be there to provide answers. But then there's also these questions out there that are seeking exits. And you see lots of those. You see them in Scripture and we see—When you've got Richard Dawkins saying, “Well, who made God?” Richard Dawkins should know better, you know. When my four-year-old asks that question, okay, fair enough. But when you have an academic from Oxford asking that question as if it's legitimate of the Christian God, something else is going on.Jonathan: I remember Keller teaching on Job, and he says Job is filled with questions, right, but the issue was that he never left God. He didn't say, “I have questions and now I'm going to go over here and ask them.: But he kept asking the questions of the Lord in his particular situation. And he was saying that questioning can be a good thing because it's, as we talked earlier, all truth is Christ's truth, so there's nothing to be afraid of. You're not going to get an answer where it should cause difficulty. But rather, you're sticking close to the source and you're going to get your answers within reason. But rather than going—And it's interesting, because that's what these TikToks and all these things are creating is new avenues for you to go and ask questions and find a story that resonates with you, right, that's the big terminology that we were using earlier. So that resonates with your story and how you feel, and then where did they land? How do we invite this sort of cultivating an openness for asking of questions? Is it let's have a Q&A session at the end of church? Is it, you know, we need to start training our parents to have them understand that your kids asking questions is a good thing because they're coming to you versus no, everything is fine and I'm going to go to YouTube and find the answer because I think you're going to be mad at me or whatever it is. Help us think through that from a church perspective. Alisa: Well, I think starting with the parents is a great place to start because if we can train parents to be the first person to introduce some of these difficult topics to their kids, we know statistically the first person to introduce the topic will be viewed as an expert in the eyes of the child. So when we as parents are the first people to talk to our kids about gender and sexuality and all of these different things—and promoting an environment where we're not weird about it, we're not acting awkward about it, then we want to be the Google. I want to be Google for my kids. And that means I'm going to be really honest when they ask their questions and sometimes give more information than they wanted.My daughter, she jokes with me like “I know I'll get a straight answer from you with whatever I ask.” And so maybe even training parents to ask your kids questions like “Hey, what's your biggest question about God?”And parents don't need to be afraid of what their kids say, because it's perfectly fine to say, “Wow, I've never really thought about that. Let's think that through together,” and then go do some research and continue to engage with your kid about it. But I think in the home, if we can start there, that's a great place. And then the church can help come around parents with even youth groups doing Q&As and pastors doing Q&As. I think that's a huge way to promote that environment from the home, all the way through the church culture.Jonathan: Okay, let's do a little sort of engaging with others segment here. What would you say to those who are seeing their loved ones go through deconstruction or exvangelical. What would you say to them? Buy our book.Tim: Yeah, that. And I mean the first thing that I would say is stay calm. It can be not just earthshattering for the person going through deconstruction, but the loved ones of those deconstructors it's often earthshattering. We talk about this in the book, actually. To find out that my kids who I've raised in the church come to me and say, “Dad, I don't believe any of this stuff anymore, I'm out,” that would be crushing.And I would want to remind myself: stay calm. I've heard so many stories, and they're actually horror stories, where a child comes to a parent and says, “I'm deconstructing” and the parent just loses it. “How could you do that?” And they overreact, and of course that's not going to help. That's the first thing.I would want my kids right away to know that they are loved, period. That this doesn't change my love for them. It's not “I love you, but let me fix your theology.” It's “I love you, period. You're still my daughter. I'm still your dad. That's not going to change.”And then another thing just to add is say thank you. It must have taken a lot for that individual, if they come to you and share that they've deconstructed, it must have been a big deal to do that. So I would say, “Thanks for sharing that with me and me being the person that can be there for you.” So those are introductory things. Obviously, relationship is going to be so important. It's not necessarily that you're going to be able to maintain the relationship. We've heard stories of people getting no-contact letters from their loved one saying, “Your theology is toxic. I don't want anything to do with you and so we're done. Here's my no-contact letter.”But if they're willing to stay in your life, then we want to do whatever is possible to  maintain that relationship without compromising truth. Truth is absolutely necessary. But you want to be in that relationship as long as possible, because that's where you're going to be able to have probably the best impact.Its' interesting you brought up Job earlier. And Job's comforters started on the right track. They were there and they sat with Job—Jonathan: Silent.Tim: Silently for seven days. And then it was when they started to open their mouths they got themselves into trouble, and I think we can learn something from that. So we want to hear, “Hey, tell me your story.”One of the first questions I would want to know is, “What do you mean by deconstruction?” If they're using that word, I want to know if they just mean, “Hey, I'm asking some questions. Hey, I don't know if I believe in this view of creation, baptism, and maybe I'm changing.”Okay, that's different than what we're seeing online, okay, this idea of a postmodern process. So I want to nail down, okay, what are you going through and what kind of process or methodology are you using to go through it? I want to be able to identify those things.And of course, in the book we talk about this idea of triage. If you have a gunshot wound to the head but a broken finger, they're treating the gunshot wound to the head, right, the thing that's more serious. And in a similar way, once you understand where this person's coming from, you've heard their story, you're going to be able to do some triage. Okay, what's the most important thing in this moment? Is it that I answer all these questions that I'm having? Is it that they just need me to be with them because they are going through something? And I think that's important because sometimes we miss the mark. Especially as apologists, oh, let me answer that question. Let's go for coffee. I'm going to fix your theology and then we'll be back on track.Jonathan: We're going to fix the problem, yeah.Tim: That's likely not going to happen. And then finally, I would just say continue to pray. We cannot underestimate the power of prayer. If someone is going through deconstruction, what they need is God. They need the Holy Spirit. And so let's petition God on their behalf. Let's pray that God does whatever is necessary to draw that person back to Himself.Jonathan: All right, now thinking for the person who is considering deconstructing their faith. And again, that could be a myriad of different positions along that path, but what are the things you would want them to know?Alisa: Well, so here's what I would say. If someone is considering deconstruction as if it's like an option, “Oh, maybe I'll deconstruct my faith,” and there's no crisis that's actually throwing you in deconstruction, I would say you don't need to do that. There's no biblical command to get saved, get baptized, and then deconstruct your faith. You don't need to do that. If there are some incorrect theological views that you—maybe you grew up in a very legalistic stream of Christianity. Maybe you grew up in the Mormon church. Maybe you grew up as  Jehovah's Witness and you need to go to Scripture, make Scripture your authority, and then get rid of beliefs that were taught to you that are not biblical. I want you to know that that is a biblical process and that is what you should do.Jonathan: This is what we call disentangling, right, that we were talking about.Alisa: Yes. In our book, we would call it reformation. But yeah, Jinger Duggar calls it disentangling. I don't care what you call it. I would just really encourage you to not use the word deconstruction, because deconstruction is a very specific thing that isn't about getting your theological beliefs corrected according to the Bible, and so we want to be reforming our faith according to Scripture. And so if you need to disentangle, as Jinger would say, or reform beliefs that were unbiblical, please do that. And that can be a very long process. It can be a difficult process. But if someone is listening who's maybe propelled into deconstruction through some church abuse or whatever it might be, my encouragement would sort  of be the same. It's actually good for you to get rid of beliefs that led to abuse, that Jesus stands against abuse as well. But I would just encourage you not to get sucked into this sort of deconstruction movement, because it's not based on absolute truth. It's not based on Scripture. And it's not going to lead you to any sort of healing and wholeness spiritually. And so whether you're just considering it intellectually or you're just interested, I would resist it. And that's … There's going to be well-meaning evangelical leaders that will tell you you can deconstruct according to the bible, but I don't think you can. And so let's keep our language and the way we think about this biblical rather than bringing in a postmodern concept that just clouds the … muddies the water and causes confusion.Jonathan: All right, this is good because this goes to the next level. What do you say to those who believe that Christianity is toxic or patriarchal? What's your word to them? And then the follow-up to that would be for believers. When do we engage and when do we not engage with people who are kind of promoting that sort of ideology?Tim: I would want to ask some questions, like what do they mean by toxic, what do they do they mean by patriarchal, to nail down those definitions. Are they appealing to something objective or are they appealing to something subjective based on their own personal preferences? I think it's really important that we start with what's true before we can look at whether or not something is toxic, or harmful, or whatever. In the book, we give the example of you stumble upon someone who's kind of beating on someone's chest, and in that moment it may look like they're being abused, but you come to find out that actually they've had a heart attack, and that person is not beating on their chest, they're doing chest compressions, doing CPR. That totally changes how you see that action, right? It goes from being, hey, that's harmful and toxic to, wait, this is lifesaving, this is lifegiving. So I think that's really important, when I see a deconstructionist talk about how hell is causing child abuse, I want to know, first of all, if there is such a place as hell. For them, it's not even on the table; it's not even the question, right, because it's a totally different philosophy, a totally different worldview. I want to look at is this true?I give the example of I told my kids not to jam a knife into the wall socket. Well, why not? Because there's electricity in there and it could electrocute you and kill you. So any good parent warns their kids about that. Or touching the hot stove, these kinds of things. Is it harmful for me to tell them not to do that? Everyone agrees, no, that's not harmful; it's not toxic. Now, it would be toxic if there was no such thing as electricity. If I'm just playing these games where I'm trying to torment my kids so they're scared to do whatever, to actually make them terrified of the stove or something. No. Okay, the reason that they need to be careful around this hot stove or not stuck, stick stuff in the wall outlet is because there are dangers. And if hell really is this kind of danger, then we ought to appropriately talk about this issue. Look, I'm not talking to my three-year-old about eternal conscious torment. You know what I'm saying? Obviously, there is some appropriate when the time is right. Sexuality, we appropriately talk with those … about those issues with our kids. But we do talk about those things, and that's because they're true, and that's were we start.Jonathan: That sort of answers a little bit of the next question, which is that you both dedicated the book to your children. And we're, I think, we've kind of addressed it in terms of being available. But in light of everything that you know and all that is going on with deconstruction and the questions and the struggles of the next generation, how are you taking this and applying this as you raise your children?Alisa: Well, I know that this research has definitely affected how I parent. In fact, I went through a phase in the early stages of the research where I would hear myself saying things, and I was like, “That's going to end up in their deconstruction struggle.” And I found myself almost becoming way too passive for it was probably just a couple of months when the research was so intense, and it was new. And it was like, oh my gosh, all these things i'm saying to my children is what people say they think is toxic and that's what they're deconstructing from.And then I swung back around and I'm like, no, it's my job as a parent to teach my kids what's true about reality. Just because maybe culture things that 2 + 2 = 5 now doesn't mean that I need to cower and say, “Well, you know, I'm not going to be too legalistic about 2 + 2 + 4.” No. 2 + 2 = 4. You can believe what you want, but this is what's true. And so I actually, you know, what I've started to do is tell my kids “Look, it's my job as your mom to teach you what's true about reality. And what you believe about God and what you believe about morality is in the same category of science, math, logic. These are facts about reality. It's my job to teach you. Now, you are the person who chooses to believe it or not.”And so what I've tried to do is really engage my kids in conversations, but knowing also that statistically they might deconstruct one day. I have to leave a lot of that to the Holy Spirit, and also to try to model to my children what a real believer looks like. I think that's a huge, a huge element in parenting is letting our kids see us repent to them if we sin against them, in front of them. Reading our Bibles on a regular basis together, praying together as a family. Not just being Sunday Christians. Here in the South it's real easy to just be that Sunday Christian and then—Jonathan: Haunted by the ghost of Christ.Alisa: That's right. And then you just live like He doesn't exist the rest of the week. And that's the thing about the Bible Belt. Certainly, people aren't acting  … like doing pagan sacrifices during the week. They are pretty much good people. But it's just not relevant to their lives until Sunday comes around. And just being different from that in front of our kids is something I've really tried to engage. And just engaging their questions without pushing them, I think, is a huge thing. Like you mentioned earlier, is letting them have their own story and their own journey. And even as my sons wrestled with the problem of evil for about two years really intensely, I really didn't want to push him. And I just validated that that's a good question, that's an honest question to ask, and let's talk to the Lord about it, let's think through some things. But trying not to push him to just settle really quickly so that he can work this out for himself, with discipleship and the guidance of parents. But that's one of the ways it's really affected my parenting.Tim: That's so good. Yes and amen to all of that. Jonathan: Okay, I second that. All right, give us some hope. This is your part three. Part three. This can all sound pretty scary and off-putting and you need to block it out.Tim: It really really does seem hopeless, especially if you spend any time kind of typing in hashtag deconstruction or hashtag exvangelical. I mean, I would go into my office here and start working and writing and I'd come out and I'd just be like … my mood has changed.Jonathan: Spiritual warfare, for sure.Tim: My wife knew it, oh yeah, my wife saw it and my kids could see it. It was really discouraging. And so I feel for those parents who have that loved one who's going through this, and many do, so we wanted to make sure we end the book on a hopeful note. And one of the things that we were thinking about—in fact, I think it started with a phone call. I called Alisa, and I remember I was sitting at my dining-room table and I had a sermon that I was going to give on deconstruction. And I'm like, Alisa, I need to end this thing with something hopeful because it is so … And I had, actually, a parent reach out to me before I gave the sermon, saying, “I really hope that you're going to give us some hope.” Because they have a child themselves, a young adult, who's deconstructing. I'm thinking, okay, what is it Alisa? Help me out here.And we just started talking back and forth and so I don't know how this came up, but eventually we started thinking about Easter weekend, right, we're coming up to it. Of course, you think about what was going on Friday night. It's like Peter's there; he's seen his Savior, his Messiah being crucified, and his world is turned upside down. We could just imagine what that was like to go through this traumatic experience. And then, of course, it jumps to Sunday and Sunday brings with it resurrected hope, right? And you have the angel shows up, tells the women, you know, go and tell His disciples AND Peter. Like Peter really needs to hear this. Friday night, he denied the Lord three times. It was a bad night for Peter. But he's going to receive this resurrection hope on Sunday.Well, we actually titled the last chapter “Saturday” because we think that a lot of people are living in what could be described as a Saturday. Now again, we're not told much about that particular Easter Saturday, so we can only speculate, but really, I mean, what kind of questions were the disciples, in particular, Peter, asking? Were they starting to doubt some of the things that they had been taught, maybe like trying to explain away some of the miracles they had seen? It wasn't supposed to happen this way, was it? And so there's self-doubt, there's all this trauma that they've experienced. Now of course, Sunday was just around the corner. We think that, look, if that hope can come for Peter, then it can come for you and your loved one, too, right? We don't know what that Saturday looks like. It may not be tomorrow. It may not be just one 24-hour day. It could be months down the road; it could be years down the road; but we think this is a message. Because if it can happen for Peter, it can happen for your loved one. And I think that can move us from a state of “This is completely hopeless, what good can come from this? How can this be undone,” to a state where, no, we can be hopeful. Jesus rose from the grave after being dead. And when that happened, Peter's faith is restored. “Do you love me?” He says, “Yeah, I love you.” Three times, kind of like paralleling the three denials.Jonathan: Exactly.Tim: And then the Church is built on this confession. So I mean that brings me hope, and hopefully it brings hope to others who are going through this.Jonathan: Just one final question. Have you seen anyone who's been restored out of this?Alisa: You know what? I have heard a few stories, but these are people that have platforms. So I have several people that are part of my Facebook community who have said they deconstructed into progressive Christianity but have been brought back. I have had a couple of people on my personal podcast who had deconstructed. One is a guy name Dave Stovall. We actually tell his story in the book. He was in the band Audio Adrenaline, and he deconstructed into progressive Christianity and then a local pastor here in town discipled him back to the historic Christian faith and had all these difficult conversations with him and engaged him in conversation. So I think we are seeing some. We're not seeing a lot yet, but I think a lot of the stories maybe are just more private, where people aren't necessarily shouting it on social media. But yeah, the Lord's at work, absolutely.Jonathan: That's good.Tim: Yeah, I can echo that, too. We've been … A I travel around teaching and speaking, I'll have people come up to me and usually you get a lot of people saying, “Thanks for hits information. I had no idea this was going on.” But this one guy, he said, “I went through deconstruction.” And he said, “It was when you put up your definition of deconstruction that you had me because that”—Alisa: Wow!Tim: I thought he was going to push back and be like, “But that's not how you define it. Instead, he said, “You had me as soon as you put up your definition.” Why? “Because,” he said, “that exactly described the process that I was going through.” And yet, here he was on that Sunday morning at church kind of completely kind of turning a corner and willing to say, “No, I'm willing to follow the truth wherever it leads.”And that led him to affirming that the Bible is God's Word, and now he's trying to align his beliefs. And of course, that's a journey we're all on. I have false beliefs right now; I just don't know which ones are false, right? I'm always trying to correct my mistaken beliefs and make them align with Scripture. And praise the Lord, that was the journey he was on.Jonathan: Oh, amen. Well, the book is The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It's Destructive and How To Respond. Alisa Childers, Tim Barnett, thank you, guys, so much for being on Candid Conversations. I've really enjoyed our talk today.Alisa: Me, too. Thanks so much.Tim: Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thanks for having us.Jonathan: God bless.

Today, I'm kicking' it with Tim Shaw, host on RealTalkWithTim Podcast. This episode is a it heavy. Please, if you get triggered, take a moment to breathe through it or step away. Tim and I are not professionals in the field of emotional baggage. We are simply sharing our opinions through life experiences. During this episode we discuss: childhood, relationship, and work place emotional baggage. Emotional baggage can stem from absent parents, heartbreak, abuse, and many other things. Tim opens up about the not having his father in his childhood. Other points we deep into are: being vulnerable with the wrong people and not ourselves, being a safe space for others and ourselves, self-reflection, being present, and knowing that crying isn't the only form of emotion. Stop worrying about how speaking about your emotions make you look or what people will have to say. FREE yourself by opening up and releasing. Holding on to emotional baggage causes health issues. Be good to yourself and let it go. No, it's not always easy, but it's worth it in the end.There are 5 ways to Combat Emotional Baggage:1. Admit2. Acknowledge3. Accept4. Adjust 5. AchieveLet us know your thoughts. Email: kickinitwithkekemedia@gmail.com with any questions on this topic or about this episode. Connect with Tim:All social media@realtalkwithtimpodcast@RTWT

“Human evolution is largely a tribe on tribe competition. So being a tribal loyalist and transmitting that cultural package reliably, that's our survival edge,” explains Tim Ash, founder of Primal Brain, international keynote speaker, and bestselling author. Tim's career path from exiting his digital marketing agency to consulting and speaking was largely influenced by his background in evolutionary psychology. Today, Tim speaks on how to leverage evolutionary psychology to your advantage within your business.Successful entrepreneurship is primarily based in storytelling, which is all about transmitting cultural knowledge to others. Transmitting this information was a matter of life and death in the early days of humanity and even now, humans are hardwired to seek this tribal connectivity. Great digital marketing should build off the basic principles of storytelling. If you are looking to sell your product or service, appeal to peoples' emotions through sharing your story, as people inherently make decisions based on their emotions. In addition to using psychology to guide your sales and marketing strategies, it can be applied to managing your business as well. For example, Tim recommends starting with your hardest task that takes the most conscious thought first, as there is a limited amount of brain energy available to you. He also shares the shocking fact that caffeine is not actually a stimulant, nor does it act as a replacement for getting enough sleep.When you understand how the brain works and why it evolved to function in these ways, it becomes easier to understand how to build connections with others and how to influence their decision making process. No matter how far humans have come since first evolving, the brain continues to work in the same ways, constantly scanning the environment for danger, seeking tribal networks for a sense of security, and making decisions based on emotional response. Quotes“Never take criticism from someone you wouldn't go to for advice.” (5:00-5:05 | Tim) “Human evolution is largely a tribe on tribe competition. So being a tribal loyalist and transmitting that cultural package reliably, that's our survival edge.” (8:11-8:20 | Tim)“All major psychiatric conditions involve a sleep disturbance.” (10:03-10:08 | Tim)“No decision gets made without emotion.” (18:17-18:19 | Tim) “Tackle your hardest problem, the one that requires the most conscious thought, first.” (24:46-24:51 | Tim)LinksConnect with Welcome to ElomaInstagram: @welcometoelomaWebsite: WelcometoEloma.comWeekly Email Newsletter: bit.ly/RIXEmail Connect with Tim AshTim's website: https://TimAsh.comPrimal Bain: https://PrimalBrain.com Details here: https://acetheagenda.com/tim-ash-for-event-planners/Connect with KileySocial: @kileypeters + Linkedin.com/in/kileypetersWebsites: RAYNEIX.com ,

Tim Hughes is the author of Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers. Even though brands can have truly massive followings, it is the individuals within the companies who draw in clients. Tim discusses how sellers can leverage social media to generate leads and meetings by creating a buyer-centric profile, expanding digital territory, and creating content. He details how to present your LinkedIn profile to achieve this goal and how your digital territory is expanded through conversations. In terms of your content, post who you are and allow buyers to get to know you and what you stand for to create that connection. HIGHLIGHTS Social media should generate leads and meetings Crafting a buyer-centric profile on LinkedIn Create conversations to increase digital territory The content you post is a reflection of your values  QUOTES Tim: "We see social media as being able to give you two things. The first thing it should be giving you leads and meetings. The way that you go about your work on social media should be strategic. Everything you do, everything you post, everything, that comment that you write is to drive you to get leads or meetings." Tim: "If your people aren't empowered and aren't prepared to be able to get those sort of things, that's the sort of level of money that you're leaving on the table. And that's going to your competition." Tim: "All the research shows that people come to social media to be social and it's about striking at that conversation and, to grow your digital network, that's what you got to do, you've got to have conversations." Tim: "What you post is who you are, and what you need to be doing is that you need to be encouraging, you need to be insightful, you need to be interesting. Even better still, entertaining." Find out more about Tim and get his book in the links below: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling/ Amazon book link: https://www.amazon.com/Social-Selling-Techniques-Influence-Changemakers/dp/0749478012 Sponsored by: Revenue.io | Unlock exponential growth with an AI-powered RevOps platform | Revenue.io Explore the Revenue.io Podcast Universe: Sales Enablement Podcast RevOps Podcast Selling with Purpose Podcast

Tim Hughes is the author of Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers. Even though brands can have truly massive followings, it is the individuals within the companies who draw in clients. Tim discusses how sellers can leverage social media to generate leads and meetings by creating a buyer-centric profile, expanding digital territory, and creating content. He details how to present your LinkedIn profile to achieve this goal and how your digital territory is expanded through conversations. In terms of your content, post who you are and allow buyers to get to know you and what you stand for to create that connection. HIGHLIGHTS Social media should generate leads and meetings Crafting a buyer-centric profile on LinkedIn Create conversations to increase digital territory The content you post is a reflection of your values  QUOTES Tim: "We see social media as being able to give you two things. The first thing it should be giving you leads and meetings. The way that you go about your work on social media should be strategic. Everything you do, everything you post, everything, that comment that you write is to drive you to get leads or meetings." Tim: "If your people aren't empowered and aren't prepared to be able to get those sort of things, that's the sort of level of money that you're leaving on the table. And that's going to your competition." Tim: "All the research shows that people come to social media to be social and it's about striking at that conversation and, to grow your digital network, that's what you got to do, you've got to have conversations." Tim: "What you post is who you are, and what you need to be doing is that you need to be encouraging, you need to be insightful, you need to be interesting. Even better still, entertaining." Find out more about Tim and get his book in the links below: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling/ Amazon book link: https://www.amazon.com/Social-Selling-Techniques-Influence-Changemakers/dp/0749478012 More on Andy: Connect on LinkedIn Get Andy's new book "Sell Without Selling Out" on Amazon Learn more at AndyPaul.com Sponsored by: Revenue.io | Unlock exponential growth with an AI-powered RevOps platform | Revenue.io Scratchpad | The fastest way to update Salesforce, take sales notes, and stay on top of to-dos | Scratchpad.com Explore the Revenue.io Podcast Universe: Sales Enablement Podcast RevOps Podcast Selling with Purpose Podcast

On this episode of the Real Estate Fight Club Podcast, Jenn and Monica are going to talk to Tim Harris. Many might know him from Real Estate training and Coaching School Podcasts and his wildly popular book Harris Rules. They discuss how to be successful in business in general and in real estate, there are many rules to be successful, and there are all some rules that Tim Harris narrowed down to simple steps in his book. Tune in for the best ones! Episode Highlights: 95% of all transactions in 60 months are going to be done by agents or people who do not yet have real estate licenses. There has always been a high failure rate in any business, and 24 months is the average amount of time that any business, according to SBA, stays in business. Tim and his wife knew each other in high school, and they have been married for 31 years. They bought their first investment property when they were right out of  college. One of the things Tim has learned is that very few people are willing to do what they don't want to do when they don't want to do it at the highest level. Very few people are willing to learn the necessary skills, and very few are willing to stay the course even when they don't have passion. Most people have an impossible time seeing what their future selves will be like, and that is the reason that the average American only has $400 saved or something like that. In the third year of their business, Julie and Tim hired a buyer's agent, and they started doing some marketing and branding. Tim quickly realized that he needed to stay on the path where they are going to be able to have enough income coming from passive income sources because they can't be transactional for their entire lives. It's almost impossible for rates to go up meaningfully. So, for agents to be having any over-emotional reaction to rates is unfounded. The demographics are so strong for home buying and transacting right now, and it's never been like this in history before. If you start thinking about the negative, you start having negative headlines swimming around your head, and you are going to stop. You are going to manifest negatively in your life. Reputation is something you earn, and a brand is something that people will tell you, and you can buy, so you will have a reputation.   3 Key Points: Tim shares his top one or two mistakes that he had made as he fumbled through his early years. The average cost to build a new home has gone up 30% and is increasing. Your passive income goal should be to have enough money coming in every month that covers all your personal overhead.    Tweetable Quotes: “When you profit from your real estate business by what you did and then invest it in something as simple as the S&P 500 index fund from Vanguard, it will double every seven or eight years.” - Tim “The branding and marketing stuff that everyone frankly was wasting a lot of money on was started back in the 90s.” – Tim “All our goals should be to help as many people to buy homes as possible because real estate is consistently the best wealth creator, at least in the past many years.” – Tim “We also have to not allow agents to point at everything in the market as to why they're not having success because the market doesn't dictate our success. It just dictates the strategy.” – Monica “You can spend as much money as you want to fool the world into thinking that you're successful, but you're not in reality.” - Tim   Resources Mentioned: Jenn Murtland LinkedIn | Facebook | (513) 400-1691 | Website | Instagram https://jennifermurtland.com/Vault/ Monica Weakley website | LinkedIn | Facebook Real Estate Fight Club Podcast  Facebook page | Instagram | YouTube Tim Harris   512-758-0206 | Instagram | Podcast   Thank You To Our Incredible Sponsor Partners (Get Great Discounts with these links) Coach John Kitchens - Go To trial.coachcode.com and put Coach Code sponsor FightClub Ghostpostr - https://www.ghostpostr.com/ (Get It For FREE!) Cyberbacker - https://cyberbacker.com/ (Get a FREE gift by simply saying you heard it on Real Estate Fight Club) Pipeline Pro Tools - https://pipelineprotools.com/fightclub/  

Community Support and Building In this episode, I speak with Mike Porter, my comic book store guy about how community impacts artists and the need to build a community around yourself. Although Mike didn't think of himself as an artist, I thought it was important to have him speak about the impact of community on his business and practice as a shop owner and burgeoning writer. Hello friend, this is Timothy Kimo Brien your head instigator at Create Art Podcast where I bring my 20 years in art and education to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. In 2022 I am rebroadcasting my former podcast KDOI Podcast here so you can catch up on what we have been doing for the past 4 years. KDOI Podcast was my first serious attempt at podcasting after spending many years just creating content without regard to the final product. KDOI started in 2016 and had 3 seasons until I closed it down in 2019. I wanted to make sure that these gems didn't get relegated to my external hard drives, so here you go, there will be interviews, commentary, and projects that you can do for yourself. Enjoy these rebroadcasts and Create More Than You Consume. This episode is about the novel, so enjoy. Topics Discussed   Definition of Community : a unified body of individuals, the people with common interests living in a particular area. A group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society, a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered throughout a larger society, a body of persons or nations having a common history or a common social economic and political interests. A group linked by a common policy, joint ownership, or participation social activity, Quote from Gothe on Community : The world is so empty. If one thinks only of mountains, rivers, and cities, but to know someone who thinks feels with us and who through distance and who though distance is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us and in the inhabited. Quote From Fred Rogers on community : Reaching Out To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and let's start that conversation. Email: timothy@createartpodcast.com YouTube Channel: Create Art Podcast YT Channel IG: @createartpodcast Twitter: @createartpod   Transcripts of the show KDOI Rebroadcast Conversations On Community with Mike Porter Tim: Create art podcast. KDOI rebroadcast conversations on community with like Porter. Hello friends. This is Timothy Kimo. Brian, your head instigator for create art podcast where I use my twenty years. Plus. From my experiences in the arts and education world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. Now, a few years ago, I used to run a podcast called K D O I podcasts, which stood for Kimo's den of iniquity. I closed down that podcast and started up create art podcast because I felt. That is a better way to communicate to you what this podcast is about. So in 2022, I'll be rebroadcasting season three of Katie or podcasting. Now for this episode, I'll be talking with Mike Porter and we're going to be discussing community. And in each of these episodes, I start off with the definition of community and then two quotes. And then I talked to my guest to see what their opinion is on that topic. So I hope you enjoy. Welcome back friends. Welcome to KDOI podcasting Kimo's den of iniquity, where we create more than we consume. I am your head instigator, Timothy Kimo, Brian, many times creating art is done in an imposed isolation or away from our audience. When we do that, we can often feel like we're the only person doing the art we are doing. And we may never find our intended audience. It's important to find our community, to learn, to challenge and to inspire our creativity. I never went to conferences while in college, but since I left academia, I've gone to three conferences in two years about podcasting. Now, each time. The other weirdos that do what I do. I have a sense of family that I'm not the only crazy one out there doing this. It makes me want to push through blockages and create more. Now let's listen to what Merriam Webster says, a unified body of individuals, the people with common interests living in a particular area. A group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society, a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered throughout a larger society, a body of persons or nations having a common history or a common social economic and political interests. A group linked by a common policy, joint ownership, or participation social activity, our quotes come from Goethe or girthy. However, you'd like to pronounce his name. The world is so empty. If one thinks only of mountains, rivers, and cities, but to know someone who thinks feels with us and who through distance and who though distance is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us and in the inhabited. We also have Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers, to the most of us, we live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It is easy to say it's not my child at my community, not my world, not my problem. Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people. My heroes Guthy was a German writer in state. Is works, include four novels, epic and lyric poetry, prose, verse dramas, memoirs, autobiography, literary, and aesthetic criticism, and true to seize on botany and anatomy and color. Fred Rogers, otherwise known as Mr. Rogers was an American television personality, musician, puppeteer writer, producer, and I didn't know this Presbyterian minister. Dictionary definition was very long-winded. But what really spoke to me was body of persons of common and a specifically professional interests scattered throughout through a larger society. You know, we have shared interest in our exploration in inter interpretation of art. Yes, we are all over the world and we can always find a kindred soul that. For me, you can't go wrong with Fred Rogers. We do have a shared responsibility and isn't it great to know that we can help each other out. In fact, many artists I know are only too happy to help other artists out with supplies or a space to express themselves. Just like I'm doing here today. So let's get this conversation started. Mike Porter: making off of your art. Do you consider yourself a professional artist? Tim: All right, so it's $400. $400 a year. Is it 400 American or 400 Canadian or 400 Australian? It's $400 American Mike Porter: wise, unless you're a dual citizen and you're living in Australia, in which case it's whatever their tax codes is. Tim: Well, why does it have to be 400 Mike Porter: American? Because that is the amount Tim: that, but who determines that it has to be American, who is the determining factor who was saying that it has to be 400. Who says that the government they get, what, which government, the American government, why is Mike Porter: there an American government? There is definitely an off and on occasionally, Tim: every four years might be an American government. We get an extra day. If we want to be open. I like being open. I'm all about giving and being open Mike Porter: and honest. Tim: Oh no, I don't know. I didn't say that. No, Mike Porter: no, no, no. So open and dishonest, ask me anything. I'll tell you anything. Not necessarily the truth openly Tim: dishonest is a beautiful thing. Openly dishonest. That's that's the way I like to be. That's that's what I'm going to run my platform on that you are going to be the head Mike Porter: off, right? Except that can't be because I'm a Canadian citizen. Tim: That's. That's okay. We're going to run you for president. I'll be your vice president. And when you are elected, then you can just kind of go. I Mike Porter: don't, I don't even think I Tim: can run. Sure. You care. Anybody can run. No, Mike Porter: I think you have to be with the 35 years old and an American citizen Tim: technicalities, or you can run, you just can't win. Mike Porter: I don't think that's true. I think this is one of those openly dishonest. It sounds good. Tim: And folks, you have tuned into another episode of K D O I podcast, where we create more than we consume. And as you know, I'm Timothy Kimo. Brian and I have with me here are wonderful merchants of mercy, our purveyor of books of glean and happiness. Mr. Mike Porter with now is little fish, still an official thing, or is it not Mike Porter: a little fish? Comics died? Sasha's dead. I do have a secret nerd Panda, which is up and running. It is doing okay. But you can find me in person at Sage manages game evening, Tim: which we just came from this very afternoon before we recorded this podcast. And it was a very mirthful place. It, it, there's a lot of happiness in that place Mike Porter: For the people coming in. Yes. For the employees, not so much. Tim: See folks. That's why, when you go into these places, you need to provide either mirth or leave the employees. Don't feed the employees, help Mike Porter: feed Tim: what kind of food. Provide you with a sustainable amount of happiness for about two hours. Mike Porter: We do have a one customer who is a professional chef and he brings me pastries, apple pastries all the time. And I appreciate him very much. Tim: You know, so folks pastries, if you go into Sage manners, pastries is the way to go. Mike Porter: Now I am Canadian. So a. Donuts. They're an official food group in Canada. Oh, I did Tim: not know that I'm shocked being parked Canadian myself. I was not aware of that. Now. It doesn't have to be a certain type of donut. Mike Porter: Now us personally, I personally prefer jelly donuts, but jellies are great. Tim: What type of deal they needs to be in that donut? It Mike Porter: doesn't matter. It can be, it can be a custard, it can be a jelly. It can be they're all Tim: jellies. So a filling of some sort that is not cream, or it can even be a cream, like a Boston cream, Mike Porter: like a Boston cream is a jelly Tim: donuts. All right, fantastic. So folks, you know, Some donuts stacked. He needs them. He is not happy. He's happy where he's at and he's happy to serve the public and customers, but in order to get them even more happy, which I believe you could be more happy who couldn't be more happy. One of there's a few people that couldn't be more happy. Name one. One of my daughters, I'm sure couldn't be more happy. She could not be more happy. Cause she's my daughter. Oh, how could you be more happy than being. You would not know that you're not know Mike Porter: the answer to that. Tim: I do not have the answer to that, but you don't even a few years you could interview one of my daughters. It doesn't matter either one, they're both interchangeable and you can see, you know, what it takes to be more happy than what they are. Teenagers. Yeah, that's not loud then we'll get it out now. We're not missing. No, no, no, no, no. Don't curse me like that. That's just that's mean that's growing for Canadian kind of shocked and in awe that, I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. That's what we're looking for here today, folks. So how Mike Porter: many apologies will you get out of me? Tim: In this episode? Okay. And we already got one 11 to go 11 to go. Let's see if we can do it. All right. So today's topic that we're going to be discussing today. Here is a community, right? So in the pre-show I've already read the definition of community and given the the two quotes that we're using today, one from Fred Rogers and one from Guthy or Gerta. So SuperNet people pronounce it, correct though. Healthy. My first question, he likes, how do you pronounce his narrative? Mike Porter: It's definitely Gurtis anyone who pronounces it go theme. You get to punch. Tim: Really? It's true. You get the punch that in my philosophy class. Okay. So the reason why he pronounced it, go for it. He is because some people do pronounce it that way before you go ahead and strike me down. Right. But I just, you know, for some of the folks out there, they, they want to pronounce it that way you prefer Gerta and that's. And that's okay. I Mike Porter: appreciate you allowing me to be right. Well, I Tim: like it when you're right, because then that means that I'm right. And you know, couldn't you be more happier if you were more right? I don't think you could be Mike Porter: many things would make me happier pronunciation of people's names. Probably not high on that list. Not high on the Tim: list. Okay. What do you think about the quotes that we had from from Gerta and from Fred Rogers? Okay. So Fred Rogers quote is and I have it right here. If you'd like to take a look at it again. Oh no, no. It is tattooed on your chest. I did see a tattooed on your chest. I don't know why you showing me his chest areas, but he is doing that right now. As we're sitting in this coffee shop for the Mike Porter: folks at home, the, just for the Tim: quote. Mike Porter: Him and talking about how the people that actually are involved in the community or the people that he sees as being heroes, that there are people that walk by or somebody is in trouble. They don't feel invested in that person, right. As, as part of a community and the people that stop and help that person or the people that fed Rogers consider as a hero, Tim: remembering the program. You want to remember this correctly. So you enjoy that E that really spoke to you. Right? My, Mike Porter: my rebuilt, I think that there's a lot of. Sidelines people and more now, I mean, it's weird to give an example when we moved into the neighborhood that we're currently in I went with home-baked goods to the neighbors and introduced myself and he was like, Hey, we're neighbors. We're just moving in. And they looked at me like I was insane. Because he was a stranger coming over and knocking on the door and, and introducing themselves, you only go to people's houses if there's an emergency, not a Tim: fear. Now let me ask you a question on this, because I've known you now for about five years. What color was your hair when you did that? Like the color of my hair was probably brown. It was brown. Okay. So it was a natural color, right. Okay. That's fine. Nevermind. Nevermind. Go ahead. The reason why that's, because I've had purple Mohawks and I can understand if somebody was a little. For clubs, shall we say a little bit alarmed. If I came up with baked goods to their house and said, hi, I'm your neighbor. Right. Mike Porter: But the point I, well, I don't know if this is a 409, but what, I'm, what I'm trying to move, maneuver myself towards. Is that the idea of what is a community it's changed in that? The face-to-face. Sort of interactions with people that, that community I think has drifted apart, but it's sort of been replaced with a digital community now, like the online people, you have the GoFund me's and the. Hey, help me out two pages and people will give money to the people in need and that's fantastic. But if they saw them on the street, wouldn't, wouldn't stop in and help. Wouldn't, you know, they look at the person who's homeless is an inconvenience when they're walking, but that same person will give money to somebody they don't know to have their window fixed or to help them get into college or to. So the idea of community, the what, what is the community has changed in that re in some ways it's a lot broader because we live in this digital world, but at the same time, the interpersonal in-person community is, has suffered, Tim: I think. And I can't Verify the information that I'm going to share with you. So I'm gonna share it with you anyways, right? Because just making this up because that's what we do know. I actually heard it someplace. I, I heard it on NPR and like they're very reliable, more reliable than my shell. I don't know. Okay. But certainly more viewers. Well, just three more viewers, three, just three more, you know, and that's, that's on statistics that I have created, right. And I don't have any viewers. I have listeners, but that's okay. I've got, you know, they've got three more than I do. So, but they were saying with the go fund me accounts that well, over half are dedicated to people's medical bills. So they're like one of the largest insurers in the country. Right. That doesn't surprise me at all. You know? So, you know, w we, we have a tendency to develop the community around us to better ourselves, well, to, you know, for an emerging. If we need it, but in order to enrich and enliven ourselves, we need to have the community around us. Right. Mike Porter: When, when I had little fish comics, at one point, there was. Vandalism incident with involving a what do you call them? Slingshots. And somebody broke the window in Tim: the front. It wasn't me. I know. I'm not saying it was just because I'm from Chicago. The way we don't use slingshots in Chicago, by the way, Mike Porter: that would be an amazing town. If it was a city, if it was Tim: just all slingshots, there would be, Hey, you know what? It'd be a lot nicer place to leave. Zack a lot nicer, fewer rocks, fewer rocks would be new. That's true. But somebody, one of our customers set up a GoFundMe for a little fish comics. Didn't didn't talk to me about it. Just set it up that, that day. And the community of people that were coming to the store donated enough to have the window repaired within 24 hours. Mike Porter: So that was crazy. And that's like, that's a cool way that the digital world can interact with. The actual sort of meat Tim: world, the meat world, as in like cow ham, Limburger cheese. Yep. Physical world, the physical world. Okay. I got you. As opposed to digital well understood digital meat I hear is making a breakthrough. Mike Porter: It's not as filling Tim: it really. Isn't looking at Mike Porter: pictures of cows. Tim: It's just not the same. And it's, you know, it's, it's satisfying yet. Not fulfilling. And I'll give you that, but in a satisfying to look at pictures of cows, I often look at videos of cows myself, but that's what I do, Mike Porter: nothing to say to that, Tim: nor am I looking for you to say anything to that? You know, what more can you say after that? So now Gerta is a thing is the world is empty. If one things only of mountains, rivers, and cities, but to know someone who thinks and feels with us and who through though distant is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth. And inhabited garden. How does that make you feel? Do you have a community now? You know, there's an arts program. We would talk a lot about arts here, obviously. And, and we had our I don't really want to call it a disagreement. We had our miscommunication we define words different. In our last conversation. Okay. Mike Porter: I have to refresh me in, what Tim: were your artists, the term artist, right. You were referring to a professional artist. I was referring to ameture artistry as, as being an artist. So for this, your community, do they provide you an inhabited. Artistically Mike Porter: artistic. Well, here's the thing that I think is kind of interesting about artistic community. I think that up to a certain point, they're incredibly helpful that they, they can inspire you to continue. They can push you to, to create when a community is made up of the same sort of. I'm going to use, let's say podcasting as an example, my impression of having listened to several people, talking about making podcasts and how to make podcasts. Up to the inception point of creating the podcast incredibly helpful and wonderful to each other. Once you actually have that podcast up and running, and it becomes a competitive competition, the community sort of doesn't help as much right now. That they're up and running. Now that you've gotten them creatively going now, you don't want them to have viewers because, or listeners, because you want those listeners for yourself. If they're talking about the same sorts of things, there's a a measure of where the pendulum is going to go and you want it to go towards you rather than towards them. Kind Tim: of like a territorial kind of thing, what you're saying. Right. Mike Porter: I've I've experienced it with writing in the sense of once as when you're a struggling writer. Professional writers will give you a lot of advice. Well, I'll give you a lot of helpful advice. As soon as you are a published author and you're interacting with another published author, it becomes weird because they, they're not talking to you like Like a mentor mentee. Not even at a, as peers, like getting equals you're, you're more guarded because if I have a story idea and I'm trying to flush it out or flesh it out I might not talk to somebody that I know has published a book because I'm worried that they will take that idea and publish it, because I know that they have the ability to do that because they've published before. Whereas somebody who is struggling as a writer, I might be, feel more free to talk about an idea in front of it and workshop an idea because I'm not as concerned that it's going to be stolen. So there's, there's a. Among communities of the same sort of art, art history. There's a guardedness. I think that happens at after a certain point at a certain level that doesn't help. Yeah. And I don't know if there's any way to get past that beyond. Proprietary thinking of that idea as being yours and getting to where I think is a more evolved state of, Hey, here's an idea. And even if they do something with that idea, it doesn't diminish what you're doing with the idea at all. So I think that's the sort of the next level of community is where, where you can get to that point. Openly discussing things without the fear, but generally speaking in, in sort of a consumer capitalist kind of, kind of base where you're chasing that the monetary value of things there's always going to be a guardedness that we're getting in the way of producing a creative idea in a community, in a group because who owns that idea? Tim: Exactly exactly who does own that idea. If a bunch of people developing it, if you workshop an idea, if you bring a short story to. And they toss him, their critiques windows become theirs when he does come. When does it become the communities and see speaking to yours. Right. You know and that, that can be a, a downfall of communities as well. Folks that are in the same disciplines, you know, a group of writers or group of podcasters. Absolutely. I've witnessed that too. You know, you get. You, you, you know what you're saying? That, that certain level of force no longer your amateur doing it for fun, doing it for a hobby it's Ooh. I just, you know with podcasting it's I scored my first advertiser. And then that was that next phase. How do I get my next advertiser on here? How do I get, you know, a beeline beeline B-level celebrities on my show, right. And there's really no way of going about doing it. Three conferences and it's all be pushed on monetization, monetization, monetization, and then they're going to show you how to do that, but you gotta pay a little, you gotta pay, you know, 40 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month for that. Right. And so it's no longer mentor mentee. The business, providing Mike Porter: a service at that point. It's not a, it's not that mentoring you they're, they're offering their expertise as a service to be mine and the fear and the, the, at least for me, like my still discomfort, when we go back to that idea of workshopping an idea. If I put, put forward a short story in a group and they add things in and I, I make use of that. There comes a point where you're. You have to give credit, right. And it's never clear at what that level is at what point you, you say, thank you for lying to the group for helping me workshop this, versus giving somebody an author credit versus, you know, the different levels of, of contribution. And then at the expectation of Reimbursement. If, if you say, well, this person did a lot of editing on, on my, my story. I'm going to give them a, a writing credit on it and being nice about it. Nice being, just being honest in saying, Hey X person helped the lawn experts and given, then go look at my, my name is on this too. I should be getting 50% of whatever. Exactly. So it becomes how much credit can you give and still make money with what you're doing. Tim: You kind of lose the the, the, the giving aspect of a community. Versus the what's in it for me. Right. Mike Porter: And that's, that goes to the Fred Rogers quote, actually, if you're, I think that that's sort of the fear of giving a credit or helping out. You're not going to get any, anything out of it. That's the person that Mr. Rogers is saying, isn't that isn't their hero. The person that's, that's volunteering, their, their expertise and help to solve. Is the person that he's looking at as Tim: being easier. Fantastic, fantastic thoughts there. Do you think and I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here and that's not just because that, you know, the drink that I have has a is an ex gold cup in the most of my tattoos have skulls on them. You get to keep that. No, I do not. As far as well, I don't know. I might, I could fit my bag nicely and I would assume, no, I wouldn't want to do that. I like these people here at this coffee shop that were fantastic, Mike Porter: but I'm Tim: going to play the devil's advocate here with that. And could it be that that what you, you know, published that first book once you get that first sponsor once you get that first a thousand dollars on Patrion. Sure. The other people that have. Guided you, mentored you at that point, then they kind of go, okay, well you've made it over that hurdle. You've made it over that goal. Fly be free. Now, now it's up to you to do that. Now it's up to you to repeat Mike Porter: that. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a, there comes a point when mentors become peers. And that that fits into community somewhere. I mean, you can have a community of peers, you can never I'm not sure. I'm not sure what your, your, your point is to it. Other than, other than just say that. Yes. I think that at some point you know, the student has become the master grasshopper that you've learned as much. Ken from somebody in a practical sense, but at least artistically since it's a creative endeavor, there's no limit on creativity. So you can keep learning from the same person and seeing how they create things and learn something new from them. As long as they're willing to let you observe or interact In terms of a community it, it becomes more difficult for peers in a competitive industry to help each other out Tim: their world is a very competitive thing. And there's Mike Porter: only so much wall space for your, for who gets to hang their P their paintings. Right. So that's true. If, if you get that, that showing, that means somebody else is, and I don't, I get, I think that goes to that, that idea that The more involved, artistic ideal would be congratulations. You've gotten this space and I will get my space. And it's, it's not a competition. But as long as we're looking at trying to make a living at it, we're going to be the professional versus the amateur. I mean, that's it, that's when it, when you can. You can't be as altruistic as you might want to be because you're going for a limited Tim: resource. So it basically, once you hit that point of you no longer to have that, your, your professional, then you don't necessarily. Cutthroat about it, but you have to you you've taken on a new master per se, instead of the the inspiration ferry that, you know, flies around that, you know, it's everybody, you have to think of it as a business. You have to go on that left side of the brain. Right? Mike Porter: I think, I think that the community is a lot more willing to help you out on the creative end of things, and a lot less willing to help you out on the business. End of things, because creative. We helping you develop an idea that you've come up with and right. That you, or tell your, your own or whatever that doesn't cost me anything. Right. Getting you to the, so once you have that idea and develop, once you have that painting done, once you have that story. And you're trying to get it published. That's where we start getting into competition. And that's where the community, I think, breaks down in the sense that we can work very well together on workshopping an idea. But as soon as you're trying to get it published, and if you're wearing the same art form, I'm writing a science fiction stories and you're writing science fiction stories. There's only so many places that are accepting science fiction stories. And I might not want to tell you that about an idea where you could actually sell that idea if I'm intending to submit something to that place, to And that doesn't make you a bad person, as I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking that it's also misguided in the sense that while you and I are both submitting something to the same people, we're not in competition with each other, we're in competition for their attention. My, you, you putting in. A great story. Isn't stopping me from putting in a great story and both of us feel accepted, but it's hard to get past that idea that it is a competition that even. I guess a more involved. I think you, you don't look at it as being in competition with each other. When you're living paycheck to paycheck to paycheck, it, I'm going to stop hitting the table because of you get Tim: the typical questions you want me to focus? He's about ready to flip over the table because he knows that if we were to go ahead in the science fiction, writing contest, he would beat the crap out of me. He's a better writer than. Mike Porter: It is very kind of you to Tim: say, well, I try to be kind like that because you know, I, I do fear you. I just, I thought I should let everyone know. I do. I do fear Mr. Porter here light mighty brain hit his mommy brain and is something that I have been eating all of ever since I lived in Chicago and he actually reviewed some of my work a long time ago in a galaxy. And provided some good criticism for me. And this was a long time ago. You may or may not remember it. Mike Porter: I think that you gave it to me at one of these spoken word. Open mics. Tim: I'm remembering correctly. I saw, and I give it to you when I lived in Chicago and we in tele my wife passed about two and that he can help me. I don't. Am I a minute spoken when I could be, you know, there's been many, you know, it serves so much time has passed. We've known each other for so long. Excellent. So with this community idea here do you think you would be better to have a community of different disciplines? W would you be more willing to do it? I think we need different disciplines. So let's say you wanted to do some writing and then you were in a group of painters, podcasters dancers. No, that congestion Mike Porter: first, first we have to overcome the idea that one discipline is better than another. No, I'm not. I'm not just, just trying to think of, of how that community would work because you would tend to. Collaboration. Because as a writer, I can sit in this coffee shop that we're in right now, and I can look at the paintings on the wall. Tim: It'd be inspired to write something because of that painting. I've my, one of my books of poetry wisdom from the it was 60 pounds, 30 poems in 30 days. I did it twice, you know, so I had 60 poems in 60 days. And I give it to my good friend, Heather, and I said, I need some illustrations paintings. What have you, anything grabbed me? And she did all the illustrations for it. And she did the editing on that poetry book. So I think. Our forms can influence and inspire each other. She's also a writer. She's also a poet and musician and all that kind of jazz. You know, she's got a lot like me, which is scary. She's the female version of me. Mike Porter: Well, do you think that makes it easier when you're a Jack of all trades like that? You can put a master of none you can look at at how other disciplines can interact in, you know, when you, when you're painting. And that inspires you to write a poem about that piece. Well, and good. You're you you've worked those two disciplines together. But if you're only. Tim: Oh, you're just a writer, just a lowly writer. Cause you know, we all know that the writers are the lowest ones on the totem pole. There are, what do they got a piece of paper and something to put it on. You don't even need a pen. You, you know, you can take a mark who decides example and be in the insane asylum and write a whole book with poop. I don't, I don't think that's true. That is true. I saw it on a movie once. Mike Porter: I don't think he wrote a book in feces. I think that's a great story. Tim: That's true. We will put it in the show notes. We will find out we'll do some investigative journalism here with all the money that you guys are putting in my patriotic. Oh, what, Mike Porter: what I think with a community of a diverse community of different art artists, artists, and artistic types. First you'd have to overcome the, the tendency for groups to come together. And that's where people who are like yourself that are able to bring together a diverse set of skills and different forms of artistry to bridge that gap because. Wow most, well, not most, but a lot. A lot of artists tend to be insular creatures. They live inside their own heads. And so when you get a group of artists together, it's usually a very quiet sort of, or it's incredibly Rawkus and has nothing to do with art. So in order to facilitate a productive community, you would have to have people that are able to bring up, bring people into the conversation. Okay. If you leave things to their own devices, I think that the painters would clump with Peters, right? As you'd pump with writers, and then they would maybe wave at each other across the room and say, your thing really inspired me. Thank you. And you're welcome sort of thing. But in order to actually get collaborations, you would need somebody to say, Hey, Hey, come in, Kevin, come into this conversation. What do you think. About X and, and make that that person share. And once you get those, those boundaries down, I think you would have an amazing group that that would fire off of each other. But until you have those, those facilitators in inside of a community of artists, I think it's, it's just going to be a lot of so quiet introspection and every so often, very hesitantly showing something to somebody else. Tim: So what's stopping you from creating this. Me, you might stopping you from this. Yes. It's Mike Porter: all your fault. Usually it's my fault for myself. Tim: Why would you want to partaking up the cup? You're picking up the cup now. He is, you know, deep in thought and he's being very contemplated here, folks. But my question to him is going to be, you know, would, do you feel yourself or would thrive if that community was presented to you? No. No. You don't think you would thrive that. Mike Porter: I, I think I can see how other people would thrive in that and how beneficial it would be. But I am, you're very handsome. I'm crazy shy. And I don't like groups of people and I would much rather, you know, My wife has said in the past, we'll go have fun and going into, into groups and we have very different, different definitions for fun in those things. I, I sort of at any gathering and up against a wall. Sort of watching and then every so often I'll make the effort to dive back in like one of those Valiant sea turtles, just sort of pushing, it's trying to get given the tide of the party will push me back up against the wall and get my breath back. Kind of get that energy back up being by myself and then I'll dive back into the party, but I'm Tim: telling you, it's not for you. Yeah. I'm not, Mike Porter: I'm not a big sharing kind of kind of person. Tim: Do you think that that would it's not for you, but do you, would you get benefit from it? Do you feel you would get benefit from it? Mike Porter: The. Brutal honesty of, of self-reflection reflection. I would probably benefit very much from it. I'm not sure anybody would benefit from me being there because I would not be sharing as much as I wouldn't be sort of quietly in the corner, listening and taking notes and bettering myself because I just, I don't deal with groups very well. Just not extroverted enough. Tim: Okay. We're not, we're not, we don't have the couch here today, so we're not going to psychoanalyze. I hope you're okay with that. Sure. Okay. Good. I mean, I, if you want to, we can go to my house in the man cave in the studio. I have a couch there with a vibrating chair. It doesn't have heat, but I do have a little, a little, a little firebox there that we can turn on and have some heat pour on us. And we can say, I call the sideline long as you, if you like. Mike Porter: Well, I'm just saying that right now. There's two of us. Tim: Yeah. Well, there's, there's three. There's you and me and the listener. Right. Mike Porter: But they're not Tim: interacting. Sure. They are. They're judging us as we're talking over Mike Porter: there quietly, what is he talking to him? He does not know what we're up. He speaks, but I don't know what they're thinking. So their judgment of me has no impact on me talking to you. I feel no. Wait. I have people around me judging what I'm saying. I feel a little bit because I'm in a coffee shop and I'm sure that other people can hear me and then feeling a little nervous, more nervous now that I'm thinking about that, Tim: but you're here with me. Right. And I'm a very, yeah, you can take, you can take them a very extroverts. I've been known to be that way on occasion. Okay. So I'll take them on for you. If anyone, everyone harasses you, Chicago Tims. But, but the point being that Mike Porter: There was a point something oh, that I, that I don't mind the, the, the idea of the listener, because I, it's not going to effect what I'm saying right now. On the other hand, if I was in a, in a room. With the expressed purpose of us as a group, doing something together, I would feel a great deal of weight in expressing my, my opinion to a bunch of people that would be judging that opinion in real time. In front of me, which again goes back to that idea of digital community. I'm a lot more comfortable sharing stuff on a, on a forum than I am in in person. Tim: So maybe what we need to do is to set up a community where you can be cloistered in a room where you can view what's going on, and then you provide your feedback without having. Actually be in the physical presence of the people that would be in the room and then they could get a read out of it, you know, that you could write your paragraph or whatever it is and say what you liked and what you didn't like about it. And then, and just leave it at that. And then that way you don't have to interact with these. Yeah, that's weird. Okay. We won't do that for you kind of prompt. So this idea of community things that the artists communities are not necessarily your cup of tea and it's understandable. It's understandable. You've explained yourself. Mike Porter: I love the idea of You know, that the artists, community of painters that are off and they all have the same thing that they're painting and PG moves around and looks at their stuff and it gives them pointers in that you're there to develop your skill at painting. And I'm sure the same thing can work for, for almost any artistic endeavor. But when it's more. Interactive when it's more on the level of peers, that's where I get really nervous. So that's comfortable. And I don't think I would be the hero that Mr. Rogers would want me to be. Tim: And you need to be the hero, Mr. Rogers, much. Mike Porter: Everybody should be the hero that Mr. Rogers minds, Tim: folks, you heard it here for student Mr. Rogers. She's going to move you coming out here Mike Porter: on Netflix and Tim: it's fantastic. It is on Netflix. Did I miss it in the theater? Yeah. I Mike Porter: don't know if it was released in theaters. I'm not sure Tim: Tom Hanks, right. It was a play Mr. Mike Porter: Rogers. Oh. And we're thinking of something else. There's a movie coming out with Tom Hanks. I wasn't aware of, but there is a biography of Mr. Rogers there on Netflix currently. And it was really good. Tim: I know. I was actually talking there is. From what I understand now, again, you know, NPR has better information than I do because they have three more listeners than I do through our viewers than not listeners, but viewers. But yeah, there's a movie that's supposed to come out with Tom Hanks being, playing a part of. Mike Porter: But you're listening to a higher caliber. Tim: They're they're they're they're very good looking folks. More discerning. They are more discerning they're way more intelligent. That's what I heard. That's Mike Porter: that's what I know. I heard that recently, Tim: I, I know that they are way more intelligent, way more. They're nicer people. There are people that you want to, you know, bring over to your house. And have a wonderful conversation with, well, bring over to your house. I'll bring over to my house. Absolutely. I'd love to bring all the people that listen to this podcast over to my house. Right. And you know, I, I would cook some poutine for some of them, man, that would be enjoyable. And for the other people, I would you know, bust out my grill in a grilled from steaks. Some asparagus grilled asparagus is very tasty and the the the little dish that I made last night for my wife, with the Alfredo sauce, the pasta shells asparagus, and we had not scaling. Scallops scallops. Thank you. You're welcome. Oh my gosh. The scalps animated that my wife and I had three bowls off in less than 24 hours and she thoroughly enjoyed. She's probably going to have some more tonight. Mike Porter: We'll see. Before this is a community. You can define the community by what foods you do. Okay. Tim: And you really can't, you really can't, you know, there's, there's people that like the. The farm farm to table stuff. There's people that are you know, raw they like nothing cooked, vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, pescatarians, peanut, the buck Tarion's, you know, all that kind of good stuff and the omnivores. And of course the carnivores, which they'd all the carnivores have tiny little arms just saying, all right. Well, Mike, thank you so much for this conversation with us here on community. You provided a lot of great insights, I think. And you know, folks community is out there for you. I think you can create community if you really want to, they might bring up some fantastic points about once it comes from a mentor mentees situation to a appear situation. I think he made some great points with that. Is there anything else that you'd like to leave us with with community? I think that the only other thing that I would say about community is that almost by definition, it's an investment. You have to be willing to invest time and effort in order to build community communities. Mike Porter: Don't just happen if they did, when I brought Cookie's over to the neighbors. They would have just been, Hey neighbor, thank you. Sort of thing. You, you have to continually reinforce the idea that the people that you want to be in a community with are important to you, that they have value and that you have. Insight or value for them. And that's what keeps the community together. I think the idea that you're in something together, or you have something to share with each other in common. Excellent. Tim: Excellent. And yeah, just like we're building this community with you, our listeners. He must end up iniquity where we create more than we consume. Can't wait for y'all to listen to this episode and the rest of our episodes. Go back through our catalog. You can always reach out to us at kdoipodcastingatgmail.com. Let us know if you would like to get involved in this. We have 11 topics for you to choose from Mike here. He chose this topic. I well, you chose two topics. And I we picked this one. We may get him to talk on the other topic at a later time. But that's how easy it is. Mike did was this pretty easy? This was Mike Porter: fantastic. I love doing this. This is a painless way of expressing opinion. It's like, if you don't like, I, everybody likes talking about themselves. And an extension of that. I think it's you asking? I think about X. Well, let me tell you about and why I think that my opinion, why my opinion matters. Tim: So next episode with Mike here, we are going to ask him when he thinks about the letter X. That's right. We'll probably use the capital X versus the lowercase X because you know, Mike has a lot of thoughts about the I believe it's true. He had more thoughts about the upper case versus the lower case. So again, thank you for gratuity. We will see your next episode. Remember you consume All right. Well, thank you for joining me. As I go down memory lane in discussing community with Mike Porter, he was my cartoon, not my comic book guy, not my cartoon guy, but he was my comic book. Way back in the day. Unfortunately he had closed his shop, but it was a fantastic conversation that we had at a local coffee shop here in town. So you got to hear a little bit of the ambiance as it were. I really enjoyed doing these conversations on specific topics with a lot of my artistic friends. And I hope you got something on. Now I would ask you if you did get something out of it, go ahead and subscribe or follow on your podcast app of choice. Or you can go right ahead to the website, create art podcast.com and subscribe right there in 2022, we're going to be doing these KDOI rebroadcasts there'll be 10 episodes. This is the first one and we'll have our regular episodes. And I also want it. Remind you that I run another podcast called find a podcast about, and that's where we help you find your next spring, where the podcast and outsmart the algorithm. And you can find that at find a podcast about dot X, Y, Z. For creating art podcast, you can email me timothy@createartpodcast.com. Twitter and a Instagram account and a YouTube page for you as well. All the links will be in the show notes. So it's been my pleasure to help you team your inner critic and create more than you consume. Now. Go out there and create some art for somebody you love yourself. We'll see you next. This has been a gaggle pod, east studio production gagglepod pod, where we've been helping creatives tell their story through podcasting. Since 2017, you can find all of our network shows at gagglepod.com. You can contact with. We want to help you tell your story to the world through .

  Tim O'Brien along with his wife Becki, have created a unique vitamin, supplement and nutrition store that is more about helping people than it is about margins and commissions. As Tim says" Souls before sales!"   It was a pleasure sitting down with Tim to learn more about The Healthy Place and what products and services they have to offer.   After Tim educated me, I'm definitely going to lean on him and his team in the future, to help me make better and more educated decisions when it comes to my health.   I hope you enjoy this episode and you walk away with at least one snippet that either helps you in your entrepreneurial journey or with you health in general.   For 30% off, please use our affiliate link as it helps us to generate a little income to produce this podcast...thx so much!   https://findyourhealthyplace.com/?rfsn=5901087.08b0f6   Thanks for listening!   Joe   Tim O'Brien Founder - The Healthy Place Website: https://findyourhealthyplace.com/ Website: https://livelyvitaminco.com/ Website: https://wildtheory.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/applewellness/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehealthyplaceTHP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYQVVKB58mGd_YgxAL0LMGA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/apple-wellness-the-healthy-place/about/ Email: tim@findyourhealthyplace.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Tim: My guest today is Tim O'Brien, the founder of The Healthy Place, an e-commerce store for healthy products. They also have for brick and mortar locations, one in Madison, Wisconsin, one in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, one in Middleton, Wisconsin, and one in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Tim's passion is health and wellness, and he has spent the last decade sharing his passion with the world on a personal side. He is married to Becky and together they have three children. In this conversation with Tim, I expressed how much health and wellness is important to myself and how convoluted the marketplace is and very difficult to trust who you buy from and which products you buy. I was excited to have Tim on the show so that I could learn more about the difference in what the healthy place offers over buying products at other places like GNC, Walgreens, the vitamin shop and obviously Amazon.com. So sit back and listen to the education that we get from Tim on how to buy better and healthier products in the health and wellness space. Joe: Hey, Tim, welcome to the show. Tim: Hey, hey, how you doing, buddy? Joe: I'm doing great, man, happy, what is it? Wednesday, I lost track, I just got Tim: Yeah, Joe: Back into Tim: It's Joe: Town. Tim: Hump hump day of the week, man, and Joe: Beautiful. Tim: I'm doing this to say thank you for giving me a chance to be on your show. Man, this is cool. Joe: Yeah, no, that's my pleasure, as as I mentioned before, we actually started this that I have, you know, I know that literally health is everything. Like you can have everything in the world that you ever, ever wanted. And without your health, it's just, you know, it's it's unfortunate because I know people go through things that had nothing to do with them not being healthy. They just got delivered a bad hand, Tim: Yahav. Joe: You know, so that's a different story. But those of us Tim: Jerome. Joe: That can make sure we stay healthy, there are things that we can do. But before we get into all of that, and as a lot of my listeners for the podcast and the viewers of a YouTube channel, now, I'd like to get the back story because a lot of the people who listen to the show are my hope is that these entrepreneurial spirits that are trying to figure out what they want to do are there in the midst of doing it. And they they need ideas from people that are being successful doing it. So I would like to go back as far as you're willing to go back to allow myself and the viewers to understand how you got into what you're doing today. What Tim: I love Joe: For? Tim: To share that. Yeah. Joe: Yeah, like what triggered the fact that you're now in this world of, you know, Tim: Supplements, Joe: The health world Tim: Natural Joe: And. Tim: Alternatives, Joe: Yeah, Tim: Yeah. Joe: Yeah, yeah. So I'd love to hear that and then we'll get in, Tim: I'd love to. It's Joe: Ok. Tim: A cool story, I kind of like telling it because it's just cool to see how things can work together to sort of bring you to the place that you're at. And it's sort of confirmation in some different ways. So I love to share it, man. I'd be happy to do so when my when I was like five or six years old, my mom fought through thyroid cancer. And I remember her like going through the chemo radiation and losing the hair, like seeing her at the hospital. I have four siblings, so just a lot of fear in the home, worried about mom. And then I remember this time where she came home and she was sort of like excited and sort of like filled with a little bit of hope because she had gone into this health food store in a little town called Muskego, Wisconsin, just this tiny little town that had a health food store. And she talked to this guy named John for like an hour and a half. And John shared with her all these natural alternatives that had some good science and some good reason to believe that it could help her in her process recovery, treatment of the thyroid cancer. And so she would like go in there like once a week, whether it was a refill for some supplements or whether it was some more education, because there was a lot of literature that this guy handed out as well, like books that he gave her. Tim: And I would go with her. And through this whole process, she she was benefited quite a bit from these natural alternatives that helped her and her recovery process. So I remember hearing about that as a little guy. And through that process, she got a job as a manager at this health food store. And she was there all the time, 40, 50 hours a week kind of thing. And us kids were home schooled. So we would go with mom often sitting in this back room of this health food store, doing our math problems, doing our schoolwork. And I watched over the years these testimonies produced of people coming in with chronic pain, depression, sleep issues, other folks that battled cancer, that my mom held their hand through the process, educating them. And so that was like my whole upbringing. And it really got into my DNA that there is natural alternatives out there that work and the general population just doesn't know about them, because the way our medical system set up pharmaceutical medications, you know, we have some of the best doctors in the world. And, you know, you go to them, you get a prescription, you don't Joe: Mm Tim: Necessarily Joe: Hmm. Tim: Get a natural alternative recommendation. So I got a bit passionate about that in my late teen years. So I got a job at a GNC franchise and worked for the owner who invited me to move out to Madison, Wisconsin, to manage some of his GNC stores after a little while. So I was like, man, OK, my boss thinks I'm good at this. I really enjoy helping people, encouraging people. I just happen to like like people in general. So it was it was sort of a fit. Like I got this passion for this natural alternative thing. I feel like I'm helping people. I'm impacting the world. I want to make a difference. And I was managing these GNC franchises in Madison, Wisconsin. Well, there was a corporate takeover, dude, in twenty seven where everybody lost their jobs, like corporate took over these six franchises that my boss owned. And it was like, OMG, like, what am I going to do now? And so I determined, you know, hey, I want to do something. And that's natural alternative space. I have always been sort of passionate about business in general. I had like three paper routes when I was 11 and I hired my sisters for a quarter a day. I was making bank Joe: Right. Tim: And I was so I tried a network marketing business for a little while that was suppliments and that was brutal. Multi-level marketing can be really hard. And I was like, OK, I don't want to go that route. Maybe I should open my own health food store. And at that time I had just met dating, married Becky, my wife. So we're prayerfully like thinking through this. Should we do this, put the house on the line, open up our own health food store and risk everything. And we decided to take the plunge. So our first brick and mortar store, 2010, was in a town called Fitchburg, Wisconsin, which is right outside of Madison, Wisconsin. And then twenty fifteen, it was store number two in the Madison area and then twenty nineteen with stores three and four. So that was going well. We then moved towards ecommerce where like, hey, if we're making an impact and a difference here locally, which is really exciting, we really enjoy it together. We work as a team like let's let's hit the nation. That sounds fun. And so we started to see a little bit of success there, especially ones covid hit of last year because our in-store traffic took a hit. So our pivot as a company, like a lot of smart companies, was, let's focus on e-commerce. And so that really helped us talk about a blessing in disguise, really helped Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Us figure out the e-commerce space a little bit. So really exciting. In December, January of this last year, we got our little warehouse. So now we have a warehouse in Madison and we're shipping packages out all over the United States. And that's the story. And the mission is about impacting, empowering and educating as many people as we can to just like, learn, grow and create a lifelong foundation of health and wellness. It's like a fanning a flame. You know, somebody already just has a little spark. You know, they're putting the cigarette out outside my store, throwing the McDonald's bag in the trash and like, I need something for my chronic pain all the way up to the health enthusiasts. And no matter what, to me, it's so encouraging to just fan the flame of someone's health and wellness. Because you said it earlier, life is a gift and people need to remember that. Joe: Yeah, and so have you always, based on the background of sitting in that store with your mother and seeing what the proper nutrition and supplements and things like that did for her? Did you always pretty much lead a healthy lifestyle? Tim: Funny is Joe: Don't Tim: No. Joe: Tell me you're a fast food junkie. Tim: No, I wasn't. Yeah, I was, and I always felt very bad if I was going through that fast food line, but my diet really didn't really take a huge impact until I married Becky. So for whatever reason, I would I knew a lot about supplements, really passionate about natural alternatives. But I was I was not the guy who is eating ultra clean, raw, organic, clean. I was like, OK, I'm going to eat a basic diet cleaner than most know what kind of excuses that. And then I'd lean on supplements for nutrition. And so when I met Vecchi, this is two thousand eight, she's like, wow, this doesn't even make sense. Like you can't go eat at pizza, frozen pizza, you know, and then go take your supplements. And so she really convicted me. And it's been a pretty cool team because that's always been her passion is very clean eating. And she didn't understand or know about the supplement natural alternative thing. And my passion has always been for my mom's story of natural alternatives and supplements can change a life. And so then getting married and working together as a team to educate Madison and our social media platforms and on YouTube, it's like there has to be a marriage between nutritional deficiencies, making sure we don't have them eating well, eating clean exercise. So we should work together. And I've improved since meeting, Becky. Joe: Wow, so are you actually telling me that she was already before you guys even met, she was interested in this sort of thing or she was she was Tim: Yeah. Joe: A healthy, clean eating person. Tim: Yes, she was Joe: Wow. Tim: A health enthusiast, yeah, I mean, just health, and that's part of what drew me to her is like, man, this girl's got discipline, like extreme self-control. For me, that's been an area of struggle, just like in general, like discipline waking up early. I'm the guy that would, before I met Becky, like stay up till one and then sleep till nine till I had to quit, get to work. And, you know, he's like, man, we got some work to do. But, yeah, she sure inspired me and a few of those areas. Joe: Ok, so without prying too deeply then, because now you're really piqued, my interest is the fact that you guys are lying so well. How did you meet? Tim: Yeah, so we there was like a young adults meeting through it, through church called Metro Believers Church in Madison, Wisconsin, you know, I'm a Christian, she's a Christian, and in my early twenties, it was like, hey, I really enjoyed finding people like minded. And I think in the back of my mind, I'm like, I'm searching for a life, you know? So I would go to a couple of these different churches, young adult ministry meetings, whatever, 20 something groups. And we just started hanging out. So it was like a group of like six or seven of us. And I was about six months in. I pulled her aside one day after church and said, I still laugh at what I said. I said, Hey, Becky, I've taken a shining to you and I'd like to continue on to marriage. And she's like, oh my gosh. Like, OK, I'm kind of like you, too. It was weird way to ask, but OK. Joe: It's also that's Tim: Yeah, Joe: Old school, Tim: I don't do it right. Oh, yeah. Joe: But also Tim: Oh. Joe: All right, cool, well, that's that's great. So how did you change or why did you change the name from Apple Wellness to the healthy place? Tim: Yeah, really good question, you know, Apple Wellness was a good name, you know, in the sense of like Apple a day keeps the doctor away and we just had too many people thinking we are the Mac Apple store. So I literally get calls, at least weekly, Joe: Wow, Tim: And Joe: That's so subtle. Tim: At least I know, and then I'd see my employee across the way and he'd be talking to somebody and he'd be like, well, try turning the phone off and then turn it back on, you know? Joe: Oh, my Tim: So Joe: God. Tim: Especially after he got the e commerce thing going, I started, Becky, as the graphic designer and kind of branding expert within our company for a long time. She's like the Apple word's taken. That's just gone. And I should have consulted with her a little bit more before we chose the name. Joe: Uh huh. Tim: And so she's always kind of wanted it changed. But then I found out that Apple, the company, has an Apple wellness program Joe: Oh, Tim: For employees Joe: Of. Tim: Like it's trademarked. I mean, so I figured it was just a matter of time before I end up getting some sort of litigation letter from Joe: Yeah, Tim: Apple. Joe: Yeah, well, OK, that's interesting. Tim: Yeah. Joe: So you stole one of my questions, but it was perfect because it was actually in line with what you were talking about. But I want to go back to it because Tim: Sure. Joe: It's important, again, for like the entrepreneurs that are listening to this and what we just went through with covid, you talked about shifting. They're not shifting, but literally adding to what you've already established. Right. So you were Tim: You. Joe: You were a retail store, people walking in foot traffic. That's what you counted on to make a living. Right. So when covid hit, obviously, everyone stayed home. So there goes all the foot traffic. So did you already have the e commerce portion of this set up before this happened when you said it was a blessing in disguise? Were you already ready to go the moment like that? Tim: Really Joe: The Tim: Good. Joe: You know, Tim: Yes, Joe: The doors. Tim: Yes and no, I Joe: Ok. Tim: Mean, it's like we had the website, we had the ability to set up ship products out. We had maybe three hundred out of the four thousand products that we have in our stores on the site. So we were ready in certain ways and then not ready for a lot of things. And we had no idea on the digital side of marketing, Google ads, Facebook ads, SEO optimization, email marketing. We hadn't done text messaging. We hadn't done very much of that, very basic and each one of those areas. So it was all of a sudden like pedal to the metal once March hit, where it was like, OK, we have some of these basic fundamentals. And I always tell a business owner like you, if you don't already, you have to have a website like I mean, covid showed us all that pretty quick, like Joe: Yeah. Tim: Have to have a website and you can get free ones are very inexpensive. Wick's dotcom. I'll tell business owners, like even if you're not a photographer, don't don't try to be don't don't get some real basic a white posterboard. Put the product right over it. Just take a picture by a window. Don't don't try to get real clever with it because Vecchi tells me that it can end up looking really bad if Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: You're trying to do so. Basic things like get a website, get a social media, you know, ask your grandkid if you don't know how to set one up sort of thing. So we had all the basics, but then for us it was like, OK. Let's get live chat on our website, because we are one of our difference makers, is consultations Joe: Huh? Tim: With we change lives because we ask questions and we figure out the best products and forms and brands for their specific issues, problems. So let's get a live chat on our website so we can have those conversations. Let's get free shipping. Let's make it really easy. Even if we lose money on maybe one out of five orders, let's just like make it easy, reduce friction in any way that we can. Let's get on Google ads and Facebook ads. So we hired a digital agency for that and it's pretty cool. A year later, we had 30 percent overnight of our foot traffic was just gone once we were able to stay open, thankfully. But that 30 percent in one year's time, we were able to build that on our e-commerce platforms. We were able to replace what was lost. So I'm still head spinning, so thankful for my team able to bring that together because it's quite the operation and it takes a lot of work. Joe: Yeah, did you did you keep the stores open themselves or did you? Tim: We did Joe: You did OK. Tim: Not. Joe: Ok, Tim: We Joe: And Tim: Were Joe: Was it. Tim: Scrambling in the beginning of if we could be classified as essential or not, and my belief is that the immune system is something that can really be strengthened. I'm more passionate about terrain versus the germs so we can strengthen our terrain, strengthen our immune systems, both defense and offense. I mean, there's incredible science behind simple nutrients like sand, mucus from elderberry. The University of Sydney showing the prevention which with elderberry prevention of viruses entering the cell. I mean, it's some pretty cool science. So at the beginning of the covid thing, it was like, OK, I'm not going to tell anybody I can cure or prevent Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Whatever, but I'm sure as heck going to yell it from the rooftop that you can strengthen your immune system and a strong immune system. Strong health is the best defense against any disease, virus, sickness anywhere. So I got pretty passionate about that a year ago. Joe: Cool. Yeah, that's great. So I'm normally pretty good at not bouncing around, but in this case, I want to go back to when you decided to do this. You know, obviously when when someone gets released from a corporate environment and they're like, oh, my gosh, I don't have control over my own destiny because these people Tim: The. Joe: Just literally rip the rug out from underneath me, which is another thing that a lot of entrepreneurs know because this is how they got to where they are there that happen to them. Like I'm not letting someone else dictate how my life is going to turn out. Right. So Tim: Yeah. Joe: But what's really crazy is I don't know if it if in Wisconsin or the places where you have these stores, obviously we know that you already brought it up at GNC is a big brand around the country. There's also where we are. There's the vitamin store. Right. Are the stuff that one of those Tim: Yeah, Joe: Is a vitamin Tim: Yeah, Joe: Shopper. Tim: Yeah. Joe: So there's a lot of these places. So it's almost like you saying you and Becky going, oh, yeah, we're going to create the next pizza delivery like pizza Tim: Now, Joe: Delivery Tim: There's already Joe: Franchise. Tim: 10 right around Joe: Yeah, Tim: The corner, Joe: Right. Tim: So let's see number 11, yeah. Joe: Right. It's we're going to be the next Pizza Hut or Papa John's or whatever. It's just like that that industry Tim: Yes, Joe: That's it takes a lot Tim: It's Joe: Of guts. Tim: So competitive. Joe: Yeah. So when you thought about it, as all entrepreneurs, do, we always come up with these ideas and then we sometimes will kill our own ideas without our spouse or partner or someone will say they'll be the sensible one and say Tim: Right, Joe: That's Tim: Right, Joe: Never Tim: Yeah. Joe: Right. But then you have all these outside influences of of friends and things. And, you know, at any moment, if you would have said, hey, we're thinking of opening up a vitamin supplement, healthy sort of Tim: John. Joe: That people would look at you. But what about all of these major brands? So tell me about how you got over the hump to make to pull the trigger. Tim: Yeah, do that's such a good question and, you know, to identify and I had some friends who opened a coffee shop, you know, and a year later, you know, the coffee shops not doing so well is unfortunate with covid timing and everything. And it's like the supplement thing where you, like, hear this and you're like, oh, I don't know, you know, I wish him well, but I don't know if that's going to work because it's just like there's a hundred of them, you know. Joe: Right. Tim: So I think for me what happened was I worked for GNC for, I don't know, five years. And you start to see good stuff. You start to see bad stuff, you start to see their model. They were purchased by China a while back. So, OK, it's all sourced from China. Forms of nutrients are in their synthetic forms or not so absorbable forms. And you start to learn like, OK, a better product would help this person more than this form of curcumin that's not absorbing into their system from China or wherever, you know, so you start to see where you could make a difference and you sort of start to see your difference makers. So in the supplement world, there's two veins of supplement stores. There's the type of stores that are all about muscle gain and weight loss, you know, weight loss, thermogenic high caffeine, ephedra, and then trim and tracks Hydroxycut. And a lot of that isn't super healthy for Joe: Hmm. Tim: People to be taking steroids or pro hormones, you know, not super healthy. So that's like one vein of supplement stores. And then there's another vein of supplement stores that just they sourced from China. They use synthetic nutrients. It's a little bit more about margin and profit than it is about quality and making a difference. And so that is something I realized pretty early on. And there's not too many supplement health food stores that have a lot of knowledge where you walk in. And there's not just like a high schooler selling the huge jug of protein because it gets a two dollar commission on it, you know. Joe: Yes, I do know. Tim: Yeah, yeah. And there's just not a lot of those out there. So then all of a sudden starting to dream about, you know, originating from my mom's story where somebody really helped her out, where I can really make a difference, because if I open my own stores or store at the time, I can bring in some of the best brands in the world. And pretty quick, in any industry, you find out, good, better, best. And I want to be in that best category. And all of a sudden you're working with some of the best brands in the world and you have the knowledge to be a to guide somebody with Crohn's disease. Let's just Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Talk over asthma on natural alternatives that really work. And if you impact them, if you help them, if you change their life a little bit for the better, now they're going to keep coming back forever. And they tell everybody they know because there's such a vacuum, such a desperate need in this day and age for knowledgeable resources in the natural alternative space. We have a ton of medical, we have a ton of pharmaceutical drugs. We just don't have information coming to the general public on natural alternatives that work. And I get to be that resource in Madison, Wisconsin. So I think that's why we have done well in our brick and mortar stores. And I think that's probably why our attention is higher for our e-commerce is because of that customer service, that knowledgeable resource, that going the extra mile to impact their lives. And I'll give you an example. A lady might hit our live chat from California and say, hey, I'm looking for a V12. Can you give me a recommendation? And then we might ask the question like, absolutely. Here's a couple of options. Do you mind if I ask while you're while you're taking V12? Oh, my doctor said because I have really low energy, I have nerve pain and my mental clarity and focus, I get like foggy brain all the time. So then all of a sudden we say, awesome, OK, I'm actually going to encourage the method in form of V12 because it absorbs much better than this sign form that I first sent you, because I really want you to feel the difference. And since you're feeling fatigued, a little brain fog, I'd love for you to consider this adrenal boost product that has adapted genic herbs in there, like Atul Gawande wrote Rodeo Mocca because ninety two percent of fatigue is related to your adrenal glands. So then you recommend that product. They get it. And this lady two months later goes, Oh my gosh, my energy is a little better, my focus is better, my stress is reduced, which I didn't even bring up. But that adrenal product helps with stress, too, I guess. Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Then all of a sudden they're leaving a review like, wow, that wellness consultant, Ryan, he's one of our our wellness consultants. He really helped me out. And so it's a very different sort of dynamic than a typical GNC store, health food store, vitamin shop type experience. They're Joe: Huh? Tim: All great stores. I mean, I love Natural. Anywhere you can get them. So that was like our difference maker and that's why I thought I could make a go out of it. Joe: Ok, cool. I have so much to ask you now, because you keep opening up like Kansas. So. So before again, I, I want this stuff to be helpful for the entrepreneur. And then then we're going to help the consumers that listen to this. So how when you decided on doing this and said, OK, and let's pull the trigger, how did you figure out the place where you're going to open up store number one, that you do all that extensive, Tim: Oh, Joe: You know, Tim: Good question, yes. Joe: Traffic, you know, what's going to pop up around us? What Tim: You know, Joe: Is, you Tim: Find Joe: Know? Tim: Find a good broker, a real estate broker that can find you spaces. So I had a guy named Kent in Madison, Wisconsin, and he you don't have to pay these guys. You know, it's the landlord that pays them. Joe: Right. Tim: And so as a young entrepreneur about to, like, risk everything you had, that was really important for me to know. Like, I I still am shocked by that. Like, you can just call one of these guys, try to find a reputable one, find somebody that trusts that can make a good referral. And they do all this scouting for you. They send you all the reports and you don't pay a penny. You know, I am a bottom line at the end or something, but you don't pay a penny for this. They get paid from the landlord. So he was bringing me idea after idea after idea. And he had been in the industry for a long time. So he knew the city really, really well. And he was able to guide me through, hey, this has a really strong anchor. The anchor in Fitchburg was Joe: Yeah, Tim: Target. Joe: Yeah. Tim: It was a super, super target. So I was like, oh, learning about anchors are important, Joe: Yeah. Tim: Really important. So I tell you, if you're listening, like, look for some strong anchors, because that's really going to help you for traffic. Joe: And just for the listeners and the people that don't like it, like when they talk about like a small strip mall or a plaza or something like that or even in a in a mall small, an anchor is an anchor store. That is when they go in, there's a really good chance they're not going away like they are a big thing like Target or Wal-Mart Tim: Exactly. Joe: Or Nordstrom or whatever. So I just wanted to clear that up because I didn't know at one point. But I know when you're looking at retail space like that, you want to be surrounded by an anchor store that has been around forever and is not going away. Tim: Yes, and just to further drive that point home, we have for brick and mortar stores and the one that's doing like the worst is the one that doesn't have a strong anchor by it. So just get one with a strong anchor and then look at price points and definitely negotiate. So we had that broker that was able to help us out. He was able to negotiate tenant improvement. Our big deal when you're opening a store, because you you could use money towards the build out and you can ask landlords for that. So if, again, if you have a good broker and you tell them your story, what you're trying to build out, a lot of times you can get a number of things paid for by the landlord because they're about to ask you to sign a five year lease. Joe: Mm hmm. OK. So at this point, the four locations that you have, you are in a lease situation Tim: Yes, all for you Joe: At Tim: And I've Joe: Any Tim: Looked into purchasing. Joe: Ok, so there is yeah, that's my question. It's like when do you pull the trigger on saying, OK, I want to actually start to own some of these buildings are these spaces. And that's a huge job. That's that's really put your Tim: Yeah, Joe: Neck out. Right. Tim: So in all four, I looked at them and each one has a different story, the first one I looked into though, at the Fitchburg location, the buildings were not for sale. So I was like, all this is so cool. So I looked into it and it was seven million dollars for these two buildings because it's in a strong anchor, high traffic area. So it is difficult to buy the spot by the strong anchor Joe: Maha. Tim: Because it really it would have been risking I couldn't I couldn't do it. But then the idea next idea is like, well, maybe I should move locations now that my name is established, if I can buy a strip mall down the way or something like that. So that Joe: Te. Tim: Idea is in the back of my head. But then you move away from the strong anchors. That's Joe: Right. Tim: Been called me back. Joe: Right, cool. See, that was perfect because that was like all of the things that you have to consider and Tim: Right. Joe: It's yeah, that's a tough decision, man. That's a lot of money. Tim: It is, Joe: Yeah. Tim: Dude, I Joe: Yeah. Tim: Know and I have a buddy who owns a dentistry office and he Joe: We. Tim: Was able to purchase his location and it's awesome. He's about to pay it off after ten years. And I'm super excited. So Joe: Yeah. Tim: It is depends on the situation. Joe: Yeah, OK, so now let's get into what I consider in the world that you're in and I'm a huge fan of natural like I is, it's a there's a difference between naturopathic or is. Right. Is that pronounced correctly? Is that they say it Tim: Yeah, Joe: Now Tim: Naturopathic Joe: Or Tim: Medicine Joe: Or homoeopathic. Tim: Homoeopathy yupp homoeopathy Joe: Right. OK. Tim: And integrative medicine is kind of like medical and naturopathy together. Joe: Yep, yep, so Joel and my life partner went through a battle of breast cancer where she had some lymph nodes and luckily, you know, Tim: Giese. Joe: Through through chemo and radiation, she came out on the other side and everything's great. But Tim: Good. Joe: The big thing that she also had was she had a naturopathic doctor Tim: Hmm. Joe: That went that came from the cancer world. So the advantages is that he understood the treatment that was happening with the normal medicine and he knew what to give her to not take away from what she was doing with the chemo and radiation, but at the same time helped to keep her system built up and not offset any of that. So there was a perfect marriage between the two. And Tim: That's. Joe: I swear to this day, I feel like that was the reason that she was Tim: Wow. Joe: Fairly, fairly normal through the process, like we were doing 90 X and she was in the middle Tim: That's Joe: Of chemo Tim: All Joe: And radiation. Tim: Right. Joe: Yeah, it was ridiculous. So Tim: Dude, that's Joe: So Tim: Awesome. Joe: I'm a big fan of the naturopathic side of things and natural remedies and all of that. So Tim: Not the. Joe: So that's why this was a cool episode for me, because it's hard to talk with somebody that is in this niche that you're in without it being the big stores. And so my first question, because I got so many of them Tim: I Joe: First question and the first Tim: Love Joe: Question Tim: It. Joe: Is how do you become with all of the misinformation that's out Tim: The. Joe: In the world? Right. And this is what confuses all of us as consumers. You go to Amazon and you say, I need a B vitamin of Tim: Right Joe: Some B supplement. Tim: Now. Joe: And the habit is you you click on the five star rating, things that you want. You think that's going to be the best because people are taking their time to read it, which Tim: Yeah. Joe: I think there's enough Tim: What Joe: Conversation Tim: Did he. Joe: In the world that says that's not necessarily true. Tim: Right. Joe: And then you literally are just like throwing darts at a dartboard with Tim: I Joe: A blindfold Tim: Know that, Joe: On. So. Tim: I know. Joe: So how do you get through all the misinformation that you feel so confident enough that when you when you suggest something to a client that you haven't been taken advantage of by the misinformation, like Tim: Yeah, Joe: How do you get through Tim: Because. Joe: All of that stuff? Tim: A great question and even the reviews, if a company markets really well and they're incredible at marketing, they can get a billion, five star reviews and they can be like synthetic sourced from China, not NSF certification. So over the years, you start to be able to read between the lines and you start to be able to say, hey, this is B.S. over here. This is marketing. Only not met with quality. And like any industry, you start to learn the good, better and best. So there's a few things. So first and foremost, I think everybody needs somebody on their team. Like your wife has that naturopathic doctor now as a resource that she can probably shoot an email to or make an appointment with and ask these questions. I think everybody needs somebody on their team because most people have a medical doctor and beyond that and they might have a pharmacist. Right. And they're good to have on your team, but we need somebody with. Expertise, knowledge, history in the supplement space, because even a naturopathic doctor, they know way more than I do about the human body, about maybe. Yeah, just just how to treat maybe disease. Tim: Right. When you're in the supplement space, there is you get to deal with hundreds and hundreds of brands. And over the decades, which I think 18 years now, you start to find out what brands are good and trustworthy and which ones aren't because the FDA doesn't regulate all the supplements. So you can say whatever you want on the label about me, your romantic drink here, but you can say whatever you want and. FDA isn't going to necessarily nail you if you're lying, if your label is making false label claims and this happens, there was a clinic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where not real clinical, but where they took products from a number of stores, GNC, Walgreens, Wal-Mart and Target. They took supplements from those four stores and then they had them tested at Chavannes and it was Chavannes Labs. And all four of them had discrepancies with what the label said and what was actually in the capsule. And one product was an Asia product, which is good for the immune system. And it had zero percent echinacea in there and a little bit of garlic like Joe: Oh, Tim: What Joe: My Tim: The H Joe: Gosh. Tim: Now? Yeah. So that exactly what you said. It's shooting in the dark. Is it marketing that's producing these reviews? Is it quality? Is it going to help me? Is it a waste of my money? Am I being sold. Right. So there's all those questions and the privilege that I'm so thankful for is just being submersed in the supplement world long enough. You learn a couple of things. So sourcing is vital. Where is it coming from? There is vitamin C that you can get our China, that there's some concerns there with chemicals, heavy metals, arsenic, or you can get vitamin C from Scallan, which happens to have a really rich ascorbic acid form of vitamin C clean, great place to source it from. So where a product is sourced from is really important. Number two is does the brand have NSF certification? So NZDF C, GMP grade facilities that they work with, which they're paying money to NSF to a third party test and ensure that they're having all of these practices that are healthy for supplements, they're sourcing their cleanliness. Has it been tested? Is it clean? Those questions? And NSF doesn't care about the company. They care about the reputation. So there sure as heck going to just that's a good certification is trusted in the supplement world to ensure that what's on the label is actually in the product. Tim: So sourcing No. One, NSF, GMP certification, number two and number three, which all of these take some sort of expertise or having somebody on your your team. You know, that's why I say to have somebody on your team first. But number three is the forms of nutrients. So E 12, which I gave the example earlier, Psion Kabalan and B 12 is synthetic. So your body has to convert it and you lose a lot of the content in that conversion versus a methyl form B 12, which is the natural form that your body absorbs really, really well. So four items, number one and two, saucing and NSF, you can have a very clean form of sign Kabalan and B 12 source, very clean. You could have NSF facility ensuring that you have that 50 micrograms of cyanide Kabalan B 12 in the B complex. But then it would take some expertise to know, like, OK, that's fine, that's good. But we would prefer a methyl form would be 12 because it absorbs so much better Joe: Mr.. Tim: And every single nutrient. This blows my mind because every single nutrient has good, better, best. You know, whether you're talking about vitamin C, ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbic calcium ascorbic B 12, which I'm talking about the six paroxetine hydrochloride versus toxified phosphate turmeric. You can get the the turmeric that colors your Indian curry orange and you can take that capsule and it's good for you. It just doesn't do very much for inflammation unless you extract the curcumin out and then even that doesn't have a good absorption rate. So blending it with the turmeric, essential oils and the sunflower lecithin launch the absorption where it's literally absorbing two hundred to five hundred times better than the turmeric Indian spice that you started with. And that's the form of ninety five. That's the form that Baylor University of Texas is using to literally treat cancer and chronic pain with incredible results. I mean, the cancer story is very cool. Inflammation is the root of the root system of cancer. Joe: Mm, huh. Tim: So that's an example where it's like oh man form so saucing, NZDF, GMP, great facility forms of nutrients. Those are the big three that you want to look at to know quality. Right. So that's what I always tell somebody, find somebody that you can trust. So for you guys, it might be your your doctor that your wife worked with for in Madison, Wisconsin. A lot of people trust the healthy place to help guide them, know we don't do commission so that we can just recommend what's best so Joe: Right. Tim: People can use that live chat feature on our website to just ask those questions. But find a health food store maybe that is trustworthy in your home town, that you do meet a job like my mom met John Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: Or find a store like mine that you can connect with and you can go to when health strikes, health problems strike because everybody has some conditions, some problem, something, even if it's something as simple as fatigue, you know. Ninety two percent of fatigue is related to your adrenal glands. You can strengthen your adrenal glands and you can have more vibrant energy every day. And people just don't know that. So they keep reaching for the coffee or the soda or the caffeine pills, what have you. So get somebody on your team that you can trust. Joe: So go. So you said at one point in this conversation that do you have over 4000 Tim: Products, yeah. Joe: Excuse now, right? OK, so let's just take that as an example. It's a full time job for someone like you to be the Tim: Yes. Joe: Gatekeeper Tim: Yeah. Joe: Of your of the healthy place. You have to be the gatekeeper to say, yes, this comes into our door and gets put on ourselves or in our e-commerce store or Tim: The. Joe: No, this doesn't meet the criteria. So to me, it feels like it's continuing education and literally a full time job for whoever that person. Let's just say it's you at the moment that Tim: Yeah. Joe: Is the person that says yay or nay on these products. So it's just mind boggling what is out there and what you have to do to sort of educate yourself to to say, yes, this makes the cut, not only doesn't make the cut, but it's in a product. It's not a product and not a C product, you Tim: Yeah, Joe: Know what I mean? Tim: You're Joe: So. Tim: Absolutely right. And it's like reading a book, though, you don't want to minimize what I do, it's like it's not hard for you to read English, you know, after you've learned it. But if you're learning a new language, it looks like totally confusing. Overwhelming can take me forever to learn this language. And it might take some years to learn it. Once you have that language mastered, it's just like reading a book, you know, Joe: Yeah. Tim: You just check the boxes, right. OK, where is the source from NSF? GMP, what's the forms of these nutrients? Because you start to learn and then you have experts that you follow. A lot of people smarter than me that I follow. Dr. X, Dr. While, Dr. Whitaker, Dr. Northrup. And you start Terry Lambrew and you start to follow these gurus in the southern industry that have been there for 40 years, that know so much more than you. And you're reading their literature, listening to their podcasts. They're the symposiums around the planet that are going on for this breakthrough, that breakthrough. You get the subscriptions right to the. So I just tell everyone, get plugged in at least where you're getting encouraged on a regular basis to own your health, build your terrane strength in your health and all the ways that you can inspire yourself on a regular basis and then get somebody on your team that you can trust to help guide you in the space, because it is a new language, right? Joe: It's nuts, it's just it's so frustrating. Did a three month vegan plan Tim: Nice. Joe: Because Tim: Yeah. Joe: I'm not vegan, but I loved it like it was good for me. But I Tim: Yeah. Joe: Actually I actually, in the process, lost a lot of muscle mass because I was also going always going to the gym. But all of a sudden I started to shrink both, Tim: Right, Joe: You Tim: Like, Joe: Know. Tim: No. Joe: So, yes, I'm like, I'm doing all this hard work. And it's just I needed to get on a B 12 vitamin of something. And it's funny because I don't even know what I'm taking, but it's something that I got from Amazon and Tim: Your Joe: I Tim: I can do it. I've been assigned to general Joe: I'm sure. Tim: Check that Joe: So Tim: After Joe: I'm going Tim: The program. Joe: To look when yeah. When we're done, I'm going to look and then I'm going to and then I'm going to say I need a direct line to Tim in Tim: There Joe: The Tim: We Joe: Chat Tim: Go. Joe: Room. Tim: Yeah. Joe: So have you ever thought of franchises? Tim: I have, I Joe: And Tim: Have. Joe: And I'm Tim: You Joe: Just interested you don't have to you don't have to Tim: Know, Joe: Say to. Tim: I'm so I am very interested and I have been kicking that ball around in my head for a long time because we are we specialize in education, right. So you got to find ways to duplicate yourself in a franchise. And so we created a three month curriculum that our wellness consultants have to go through. They have to pass quizzes and tests and they have to get certifications from this company, this company and MKB certification, all the enzyme certifications to understand the industry, know what questions to ask customers and how to make recommendations. So that's one of the hardest things that we've done that would make it more easy to duplicate the knowledge side of our company and our brand. And as I've talked to people who have created franchises, the the legal side to it is one hurdle and then enforcing them to actually maintain your model as representing the healthy place. What we have created is the two big unknowns for me as far as difficulty. So then the choice came, should we just keep adding brick and mortars in our own territory? Right, right. In the Madison area and then put all of our energy and focus into our brands that we've created and our website because there's infinite you can do in the business world and you kind Joe: Mm Tim: Of Joe: Hmm. Tim: Have to choose. Joe: Yeah. Tim: So we decided to park the franchise idea for now and really go after lively vitamin CO. This is one of the brands that have been borne out of our brick and mortar stores. So now we're selling that to other health food stores around the country. And the number two is build find your healthy place dotcom, because just like Amazon is a freakin mammoth, there's so much opportunity to impact and power and educate everything that I'm passionate about on that website. So currently with four kids, we are chilling on the franchise idea. But I think it's brilliant because there's not there's not the option out there, which is why it keeps coming back to me Joe: Yeah, Tim: Like Joe: Yeah. Tim: There's not that many health food stores out there that really care. Soulsby for sales. You know, as one of my Joe: Mm Tim: Saying Joe: Hmm. Tim: That, Joe: I Tim: I really Joe: Love that, by the way, I love that. Tim: Thank you. Thank you. There is a time I was praying and it was like not I it going to make my friggin mortgage. When I first opened the store, I was praying to God for sales and I was like, God to declare bankruptcy here is brutal. And it was like an arrow is like, do you care about their soul as much as you care about the sales? Joe: Yeah. Tim: And it was kind of striking. So, yeah, there's not that many stores out there that really care about the human that have knowledge to help guide them and a model that works to help people, you know. So it's still an idea that keeps coming back to me. So Joe: Right. Tim: We'll see. Joe: Yeah, well, good luck if it happens, I'm sure it'll be great. Tim: Thank you. You see one popping up next door, you'll know where to get your V12. Joe: There you go. So you hit upon this a moment ago with the whole franchising thing of how to actually create this template and create a strict thing where where the people that are talking to your customers are very educated and they're giving the right information and asking the right questions. So how have you done that with the people that are at your current stores and how have you done that with the people that are on the other end of the chat? When somebody files in to ask these questions, Tim: Yeah, so. Joe: How do you get something like when is somebody OK? You're ready to take a call, you're ready to be on the chat, you're ready to to advise a customer in the store, like, what's that process? Tim: Yeah, Joe: And you don't Tim: So. Joe: Have to go too deep. I just Tim: No, Joe: I Tim: No, Joe: But Tim: That. Joe: I'm sure somebody is going to say, like, hey, Tim, super educated on this. So every time I talk, like I just said, you know what I call him on the chat, I want him, you Tim: Right. Joe: Know. So Tim: Right. Joe: How to how do you duplicate Tim so that everyone that's coming in on the chat or walking in the store says this is just a clone of Tim like he may. He's already run them through the ringer, you know? Tim: Yeah, that's so the three month curriculum that we created is our pride and joy. I'm so thankful for that. It was brutal to create. So I created one hundred videos, having a five minute conversation where I'm explaining different parts of the world and explaining brands and what to look for and how to explain it. And then we'll go through they'll have to pass quizzes and tests based on each module. So there's nine different modules to this curriculum. They have to go through trainings with specific companies. They have to do a number of roleplaying activities with our managers where they pretend to be the customer Joe: Mm Tim: And Joe: Hmm. Tim: Coming in, hey, I'm looking for some CBDs. What do you got? And so they get tested there and they have to get these certifications from each of these brands, so they have to pass it. So there's one guy who got to the end and he is like, OK, dude, we got to rewind because you're not retaining this stuff. So either you did the last minute cramming for this quiz the night before. And like I didn't I did that in high school. Joe: Ok. Tim: And then you don't retain it, right. Joe: Yeah. Tim: So do you really care about this or not? So he had to start over. He had to go through it again. So it's a team. We have a leadership team of five. And so we have these nine modules, the quizzes, the tests. They have to pass them. They have to do the role playing. And then the leadership team of five will say, OK, this person's ready or they're really not ready. And there's still a couple of parts of our team where we're like, OK, where they can be a wellness consultant in the store, but we don't think they're ready to be on live chat. So then we'll wait maybe six months until they have a little bit more experience, because where our team learns the most is from the customers coming in asking the questions and they don't know the answers of how to treat colitis Joe: Mm Tim: With Joe: Hmm. Tim: Whatever. So then they have to go find out to get back to that customer and then they learn something. So right now, I'm proud to say our live chat feature on our website, if you go to find your other place, dotcom lower, right. You get that little live chat bubble, the seven different consultants that you might run into over there are, I wouldn't say clones of Tim because I think they're smarter than me, but they are really well equipped and able to match, kind of hit the mark of where they need to be. And they all know and are passionate enough about helping people to not. One of the first things that I'll tell them is, dude, never bullshit. Joe: Yeah, yeah. Tim: That's a real thing. And I came from a I won't say anything negative where it's just more about getting the sale, about getting that commission. And and that's part of why we don't do commissions. So it's a fun process for intense. Joe: Well, that's great, man. Yeah, so I want to respect your time. We're down to the wire. I want to make sure I didn't miss anything that you want to talk about. So you have four stores in Wisconsin. Tim: Madison, Joe: Correct. Tim: Wisconsin, the. Joe: Ok, and you have the website Tim: Find your healthy place, Dotcom. Joe: Buying your healthy place, Dotcom. Anything else that I missed that is important that we talk about? Tim: You know, dude, I mean, as I was thinking about this program and your followers, like what your mission is, you're trying to encourage entrepreneurs, trying to encourage people to be thankful for life. You don't Joe: Mm Tim: Take Joe: Hmm. Tim: To treat life like the gift it is, you Joe: Yep. Tim: Know? So I did want to offer your followers a coupon code. If they don't have you know, if you have a health food store in your own home town, that's great sport. Those guys, if you have somebody on your team, that's awesome. That's my main passion. And if you need a resource that you can trust, if you go to find your healthy place dotcom and you get something type in coupon code, Castelo, and that'll give 30 percent off the full price on anything on our whole website, we have thousands of products. So anything from V12 to something more intense. And regardless if you buy something or not, use that live chat feature to ask questions. You know, I've had people call my cell phone bill. Hey, Jim, you know, I'm in Wholefoods right now and I'm looking at three different multivitamins. Like which one do you think I should get? You know, and I get to tell them and it's fun and you can share the love. And so use that live chat feature as a resource, because more than ever, dude, we need natural alternatives. We need some education we at least need to know about, like Joel and your Joe: Yeah, Tim: Life partner. Dude, Joe: Yeah. Tim: What if she didn't have that naturopathic doctor that gave her some natural supplements through one of the most intensive crisis's that she ever faced in her life? Like, you know, in your gut that that helped her in a dramatic way because you watched her do P ninety three, the cancer experience. Joe: Yeah. Tim: I mean, that's a miracle, dude. And it took somebody reaching out and it took a resource being willing to respond to create that miracle, you know. And so that's what I want for people. Joe: Yeah, it's I can't stress it enough that Tim: Right. Joe: What I saw before my very eyes every single Tim: Right. Joe: Day and it would and then I see people that are going through cancer of some type and they're only being treated, Tim: As Joe: You know, Tim: A medical doctor, yeah. Joe: And they're their body is just being crushed. Tim: Yes. Joe: And there's and there's nothing, no nothing helping to offset the chemicals and all of the harshness Tim: Know. Joe: Of that treatment. And so. Tim: Right, and let me say, you know, you saw it with somebody you loved very much, I saw it with my mom when I was five or six. And since then, I'm getting goosebumps. I have seen it for thousands of people through the last 11 years that the healthy place has been a company, thousands of people, not always cancer, but but we're talking depression, chronic pain, Crohn's disease, asthma, like people suffering like megacorp. There's so much suffering going on Joe: Mm hmm. Tim: In the world and there is natural alternatives that people literally don't know about. They have nobody in their world telling them. So they just listen to whatever mainstream media or their medical doctor Joe: Yeah. Tim: Or their pharmacist. And there's a lot of good people with good intent in those areas. It's just there's not the voice of natural alternatives. So we need to know about this stuff. We've got to get the word out. Joe: Yeah, it's great, man, I love what you're doing, and this Tim: Think. Joe: Was exciting for me and and I think I actually have your personal email, so I'm just going Tim: That's Joe: To I'm Tim: Awesome. Joe: Going to go I'm going to go ten. I need Tim: You Joe: More Tim: Should. Joe: Energy, Tim. I think I think I have inflammation. And I'm going Tim: Yeah, Joe: To be like. Tim: I know you should, and if anyone's listening to and they because sometimes, you know, they just have a trust factor or whatever, Tim at Find Your Healthy Place Dotcom. I am happy to take emails. This what I get to do all day, dude, and it's just fun. It's so rewarding. You just get to point people in the right direction and help them out. So I love it. Joe: I wish you all the luck in the world, this is a Tim: Thank you. Joe: This is a great thing that you're doing. It's nice to have somebody who is, like you said, it's it's Soulsby before sales. It's a great it's a great way to do it. And I think Tim: Thank Joe: You'll be Tim: You. Joe: Rewarded continually be rewarded for doing Tim: Thank Joe: It that Tim: You. Joe: Way. I'll put everything in the show notes. Thank you for the coupon for the listeners Tim: Now. Joe: And I'll make sure I have all the correct links. So find your healthy place. Dotcom is the website. The company's name is the Healthy Place for locations in Madison, Wisconsin. You eventually might franchise someday, Tim: Yes, Joe: But Tim: And people on Facebook, you know, Joe: Yeah. Tim: The healthy people on Facebook, my wife's a genius as far as really caring for our community there. So you'll find a lot of good content and Instagram as well. So thank you, dear. This Joe: Yeah, Tim: Is. Joe: Tim, thanks so much, man, I really appreciate your time today and thanks for all the insight and I really do wish you the best of luck. Tim: Any time, brother, and wish the same to you. Joe: Thank you, Matt. Tim: I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I want to thank you for listening to my podcast. I know you have many options to listen to various podcasts, and I'm honored that you chose to listen to mine. I would love it if you were to rate my podcast Five Stars and write a nice review. It really helps to bring up the rankings of the podcast. Other listeners, once again, thank you so much for listening to the Joe Costello show. I appreciate you very much.  

TranscriptCorey: This episode is sponsored in part by LaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I'm going to just guess that it's awful because it's always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn't require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren't what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visit launchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.Jesse: Hello, and welcome to AWS Morning Brief: Fridays From the Field. I'm Jesse DeRose.Amy: I'm Amy Negrette.Tim: I'm Tim Banks.Jesse: This is the podcast within a podcast where we talk about all the ways that we've seen AWS used and abused in the wild, with a healthy dose of complaining about AWS for good measure. Today on the show, we are going to be talking about AWS re:Invent. Now, I know that most of you know what re:Invent is, but I just would love to set the playing field level for everybody really quick. Amy, Tim, what is AWS re:Invent.Tim: AWS re:Invent is AWS's week-long corporate conference. It's not really a user conference; it's certainly not, like, a community conference, but it's a week-long sales pitch in the desert. It's like the worst version of a corporate Burning Man you could ever imagine because they even have a concert.Jesse: It is in Las Vegas. Now, I personally have mixed feelings about going to Las Vegas in general, but this adds so much to the conference in general because it's not just in a single conference venue that's centrally located near the hotels. Is it is across the strip—Amy: It's the entire strip.Jesse: It's the entire strip. So—Amy: They block every hotel and they buy every piece of ad space.Jesse: Yes. There is no escaping AWS re:Invent for the entire week that you're there. And sometimes that's a good thing because you do want to be involved in what's going on, but other times, it is a lot.Tim: So, I'm trying to figure out which LP that ‘buy the entire Las Vegas trip' covers because it's certainly not be frugal.Amy: No. [laugh].Jesse: No, not at all. But we do have new information. We decided to do this episode specifically because new information was just released about re:Invent for this year. Amy, what is that information? What do we know?Amy: They've decided, in having to go virtual last year, due to some kind of horrible global crisis, to return in person to the world's most densely packed tourist spot, Las Vegas, and host this huge event from November 29th to December 3rd—that's right after Thanksgiving—and just, what do they say? Return to normal. Return to normal.Tim: That way everybody can get exposed to COVID before they go home for the holidays.Jesse: [laugh].well, you at least get one holiday in, if you celebrate or recognize Thanksgiving, and then you get to bring everything back after that.Amy: Yeah, people bring enough things back from Vegas. I'm not sure we'd have to find more reasons. [laugh].Tim: [laugh].Jesse: I know that there's that great marketing tactic of, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but—Tim: That's not what they say at the clinic.Jesse: Nope. Mm-mm. Now, I will say, I know that almost every conference event was completely virtual last year due to the pandemic, and this year, a lot of conferences are still trying to straddle that line between what's acceptable, can we do maybe smaller events in person, some kind of a hybrid online/in-person thing. I have mixed feelings on this. I appreciate that I can still attend AWS re:Invent from home this year digitally, I can still watch a lot of the main keynote events and a lot of the other information that is being shared, but I don't know, it's always hard because if you do a hybrid event, you're automatically going to miss out on any of that in-person socializing and networking.Tim: Well. So, I think it's interesting. AWS re:Invent suffers from the same issue that pretty much all other conferences suffer from is that there's not really value-add in the talks, at least for attending.Jesse: Yeah.Amy: If you're going to be able to see those talks afterwards if the announcements are going to be publicized afterwards which, that is true in both cases, then what's the point of spending the money, and the time, and the possible exposure to go watch them in person? So, then the other thing is, “Well, we want to go for some of the training seminars,” or some of these other things. Well, those are also offered online, often. Or, like, copies of them online. These are the same kinds of tutorials like that that you can have your TAM or SA run if you're an AWS customer currently; that's what they're doing there.The other thing is, too, those in-person sessions get filled up so quickly that there's no guarantee [unintelligible 00:05:08] anyways. And that's one of the complaints they've had about re:Invent in the past is that you can't get into any of the sessions. And so, you couple all that along with most of the reason going being—if it's not the talks and is not the sessions, it's the hallway track. And then you got to kind of wonder, is the hallway track going to be valuable this year because if it's hybrid, what percent of the people that you would normally talk to you are going to be there and what percentage aren't? And so there's a lot of calculus that's got to go into it this year.Jesse: I've always struggled with any vendor-sponsored event, all the talks feel either like a sales pitch, or they feel like a use case that just doesn't fit for me. And that may just be where I'm at in my professional journey; there's definitely reasons to go if you want to see some of these talks or see some of this information live, or be the first person to talk about it. Or even the people who are going to be the news sources for everybody else who want to be the first person to talk about, “Oh, we attended, and we saw these things and were live-tweeting the entire conference.” If that's your shtick, I fully support that, but I always struggle going to any kind of vendor conference because I just feel like the value that I get from the talks, from training if I go to training, just doesn't feel like enough for me, personally.Amy: So, I've done some of the AWS-led training when Summit was in Chicago, a couple years ago, and I'll be honest, you lose a lot in these large AWS-led trainings because these classes, it's not going to be like the ones that you would sign up for even being hosted either by your company or by your local user group chapter where you will have at max 100 people. You have well over that. You have an entire conference room full of people, and they're asking questions that are across the level of expertise for that topic. I went for one of the certification training seminars and straight-up 15 minutes was spent talking about what a region is. And given that's page one of any training material, that was a waste of $300.Jesse: Yeah.Tim: I think you run into the problem because it is, in fact, I mean, let's be honest, it's a multi-day sales pitch. It's not a user conference, it's not user-generated content. It's cherry-picked by the powers-that-be at AWS, the service groups. Is a big push for account executives to encourage high-level or high-spend accounts to participate in those so they get logo recognition. And so that becomes more of the issue than the actual cool user stories.And that's fine if you're using it literally just a sales conference because it's very compelling sales material, your account executive will go there and try and close deals, or close bigger deals, or sign EDPs or something like that, but from an engineering standpoint, from a technical standpoint, it's remarkably uncompelling.Jesse: Yeah, I think that's one other thing to call out, which is, there is definitely this networking opportunity that we talked about from a hallway track perspective, but there's also a networking and business opportunity to meet with your account manager, or your TAM, or your SA in person and have conversations about whatever things you want to talk about; about future architecture, or about closing an EDP—or I should say, about an EDP because the account manager will try to close that EDP with you—and then basically use that as next steps for what you want to do with AWS. But again, all of those things can be done without flying you to Las Vegas and being amongst all these other people.Tim: I mean, let's not take away, there's a certain synergy that happens when you have face-to-face contact with folks, and a lot of these conversations you have in hallways are super, super organic. And so I think that's indicative of conferences as a whole. One of the things that we learned in the pandemic is that, yeah, you can have talks where people just, like, look at a screen and watch talks, and a lot of conferences have done that. But that's not why people want to go to the conference; they want to go to the conference to talk to people and see people. And if you want to have a conference where people talk to people and see people, and that's the whole point of doing it, then the business model behind that looks dramatically different, and the content behind that looks dramatically different.You just have a bunch of birds-of-feather sessions or a bunch of breakout sessions. You do a keynote at the beginning, you do a keynote at the end, and then you just let people mingle, and maybe you have some led topics, but you don't generate content; you shut up and you let the people innovate.Jesse: I also want to add to that. It is one thing to have a conference that is in one venue where everybody is going to be gathered in the same space, creating conversation, or creating easy opportunities—Amy: Five miles worth of content isn't exciting for you?Jesse: Yeah. So, in Las Vegas because the entire conference is spread across the entire strip, you're going to have opportunities to network across the entire strip basically, and sometimes that means you're going to only spend time networking with the people who are in the same hotel as you at the time of the track that you are waiting for, or the time of the event that you are waiting for. It is unlikely that you are going to run all around the strip just to be able to network with everybody that you run into.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Lumigo. If you've built anything from serverless, you know that if there's one thing that can be said universally about these applications, it's that it turns every outage into a murder mystery. Lumigo helps make sense of all of the various functions that wind up tying together to build applications. It offers one-click distributed tracing so you can effortlessly find and fix issues in your serverless and microservices environment. You've created more problems for yourself; make one of them go away. To learn more visit lumigo.io.Amy: The other issue I have, not just with re:Invent, but this is really any larger conference or conferences that rely on the kind of content where it is a person speaking at you and you don't get to meet these people, is that without any level of Q&A or interactivity—and this is true especially for AWS-led events—is that it is no different than watching someone on video. You can go to these talks, and you can perhaps have conversations with people as they filter out of the room, but there's no way you're going to be able to talk to that person who was delivering that content, unless you can track them down amongst the sea of people in re:Invent or [unintelligible 00:12:16] in Las Vegas.Tim: What typically has to happen is that after someone has given a compelling talk and you really want to talk to them, you have to go and talk to your account manager; your account manager will then set up a meeting that will happen at a later time where you're going to all call in over Chime, and then you will quote-unquote, “Meet” that person virtually. And if that's the case, you could have just stayed home and watched [laugh] the talk online, and then done the same thing.Amy: Conferences need more Chime. That's what [laugh] the problem is.Jesse: [laugh]. I think my eye just started twitching a little bit as soon as you said that, Amy.Amy: I'm glad. So, then why would people go? There's the hallway track, but is that worth the heavy price tag of going to Vegas? A lot of us live in areas where there is either going to be an AWS Summit or there are AWS user groups. What do you get from going to a larger event such as re:Invent and having that level of communication that you can't get from those smaller groups?Tim: I mean, the importance of networking cannot be overstated. It is extremely important, whether it's for laying groundwork for future deals, laying groundwork for future collaborations. I've been at conferences where a hallway track, just folks meeting up in the hallway and having a really organic discussion turned into a product within three months. So, those kinds of things are important. And, unfortunately or unfortunately, they do happen better quite often, when people are in-person and they've had a chance to talk, maybe even a couple of drinks or whatever.So, I mean, people ink deals, they shake hands, they get, you know, a lot of work done when it comes to maintaining and managing relationships, and to some people, that is worth it. But I do think that you have to be very, kind of, eyes-open about going into this. It's like, you're not going to go in there to get a lot of technical insight, you're not going to go in there to talk to a whole bunch of people unless you really have a relationship or establish some kind of rapport with them beforehand. Because just to go up and blindly like, “Hey, I'm going to grab you in the hallway, and this is who I am,” that's not always great, especially nowadays, when people are, kind of, already averse to, you know, talking to strangers, sometimes.Jesse: I've always struggled with talking to strangers in general at conferences because I'm predominantly introverted, so if I don't have an open introduction to someone through a mutual third party or mutual friend, it's just not going to happen. And I've gotten better at that over the years as I go to conferences, but it's going to be especially tough now in cases where folks are not just averse to, I don't want to say strangers, but averse to physical contact and adverse to people just, kind of, approaching them out of the blue. It's tough. I want to be more mindful of that and I want to be better, but it's hard, especially in cases where you're in a crowd of hundreds of people or, you know, thousands of people across the strip, that it just gets overwhelming really quickly for some folks.Amy: I do want to loop this round, if anything, just for a poll for Twitter. Do not close an EDP in Vegas. You're probably not of the right mind [laugh] and have the right people to do that. Wait till you get back to work. Please. That's just me. [laugh].Jesse: I would also like to add—we talk about why people go; I think that there's definitely a solid contingent of folks who attend re:Invent because it is the one time a year that the company sanctions them getting away from their family for a couple of days, getting away from, you know, the day-to-day routine of whatever work is going on for a couple days, and go to Vegas. Now, I know that the company is not going to sponsor them drinking every night, or gambling, or whatnot, but they're likely going to be doing those things anyhow, so it is this company-sanctioned opportunity to just go experience, you know, something different; go take a vacation, basically, for a couple days.Amy: Corporate Burning Man.Tim: Corporate Burning Man, exactly. A vacation in Vegas.Amy: I am not a fan of ever working in Vegas. If I'm on the clock, I cannot be in Vegas, not because I'm prone to excessive behavior when I'm on my own, but more that I cannot be productive in that much noise and that much flaky internet. It drives me absolutely batty, and I'm only going to be, as far as implementations, so productive in a crowd that large.Tim: I will say this, especially in regards to Vegas, there are other places you can go, other places that need the money more. AWS wants to rent a city, rent a city that needed the money. Put that money where it could be to used, where it really makes a difference. I don't know if Vegas is the right place for that, if I'm being honest, especially after all we've learned and dealt with in 2020. And so that's why in 2021, yeah, no for me, continuing to have re:Invent in Vegas is very, very tone-deaf.Jesse: I still think, Amy, you and I just need to—actually sorry, all three of us should attend and basically keep a running Waldorf and Statler commentary through the entire conference. I don't know if we can get that little, you know, opera booth that's kind of up and away from all the action, but if we can get something like that and do some sports commentary—ohh, maybe on the expo hall—Amy: That would be great. That would be great if we don't get banned. [laugh].Tim: I think what would be even more fun is to give a MST3K—Jesse: Ohhh.Tim: —treatment of the keynotes afterwards, you know what I mean?Jesse: Yeah.Amy: Yes.Jesse: I mean, Amy and I had also talked about playing some Dungeons and Dragons while we were there, and I feel like if we can find some, I'm going to say, tech-themed RPG—I realize that is a broad category, and everybody's going to spam me afterwards for this, but—Amy: I got that. Don't worry about it.Jesse: Yeah, I'm on board. I feel like anything that we can do to create a roleplaying game out of this conference, I'm down.Tim: I'm still waiting for you to explain to the audience in general who Waldorf and Statler were?Jesse: Oh, yes, that is fair. Okay. Waldorf and Statler are two characters from the old-school Muppets Show, which is amazing and delightful. It's on Disney+; I highly recommend it. They are basically—Amy: They're two grumpy old muppets, and they have been roasting people since the 70s. That is—that's all it is. [laugh].Tim: All they do is they sit up in the upper booth and they throw shade, and I love it.Amy: Yes. And they just show up in random parts in different movies. They'll be, like, on a park bench, and there'll be a serious moment, and then they'll just start talking crap for no reason. And it's great.Jesse: They're the best. They're absolutely fantastic. I adore them. I hope to be them one day.Amy: One day.Tim: Really, both of them? I don't, I don't know how that's going to work.Jesse: I am hoping to clone myself. One of me is going to have fabulous hair and one of me is going to be balding. Probably the clone is going to be balding; sorry about it, future me. But—Amy: [laugh].Tim: Well, I mean, and have just a magnificent chin, right?Jesse: Yes, yes, that's the trade-off. Losing the hair up top but absolutely fantastic chin.Tim: Here's what I want to see. I want to see the listeners submit things that you think should be on the re:Invent bingo cards.Amy: Ohh, yes.Jesse: Yes.Amy: I would love to see that.Jesse: So, for those of you listening, you've got two options for submitting things that you'd like to be on the re:Invent bingo cards. The ideal option is going to lastweekataws.com/QA. Fill out the form and let us know what you think should be on the bingo card. You can also respond to the social media post that will be posted for this content, and we can take a look at that as well. But that'll be a little bit harder for us to follow because I'm unfortunately not like Corey. I can't absorb all of Twitter in a day; it takes me a longer time to read all that content.Jesse: If you've enjoyed this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review and give it a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you hated this podcast, please go to lastweekinaws.com/review. Give it a five-star rating on your podcast platform of choice and tell us what you think about AWS re:Invent.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Todd: So Tim, you want to talk about road trips?Tim: Yeah, I wanna talk about road trips.Me and my friends when we were in high school we took a lot of road trips to lots of different places.Todd: OK.Tim: We would go down to California sometimes Mexico. One time when I was living in Wyoming, in one weekend we drove from Wyoming through Colorado, New Mexico, and Mexico and back in the same weekend.Todd: Wow! Well, actually for people who are not familiar with the United States how far is that?Tim: It's a long way. I don't know. It took.. I don't know, it took probably about 15 hours one way.Todd: Wow!Tim: So, thirty hours altogether. But it was fun. We drove down to Mexico had a good night a good meal, a little bit of drinksand drove back the next day.Todd: So you went to Tijuana?Tim: No, we went to Ciudad Juarez.Todd: OK. Nice.Tim: That was really fun and a lot of other trips we took when I lived in Oregon when we'd go down to California and we'd surf.Todd: Oh, really?Tim: Yeah!Todd: Oh, you're a surfer?Tim: A little bit, a little bit of surfer.Todd: OK. What kind of car do you drive? What do you use for this road trip?Tim: Well, typical American a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Big vehicle, lots of gas but a lot of fun.Todd: Oh man, you're from Oregon you're supposed to be a tree-hugger!Tim: I know. I know. But they're good. One rule we had on our road trips was any lake or big body of water we had to stop and swim in. It was a good thing to do.Todd: Well, you live in Japan now. Do you ever do road trips in Japan?Tim: I took a road trip from Niigata up around Hokkaido and back, so it was a long road trip actually.Todd: OK. Wow! What's the difference between a road trip in Japan and a road trip in America?Tim: Well, a road trip in Japan..it's a little bit more difficult to get around, it's a little bit more expensive. In America, road tripping is sort of.. something a lot of people do.Todd: Yeah.Tim: And in Japan, when we do that it is a little bit strange, a little bit different, not very normal.Todd: Yeah, that's true. OK. Great, thanks a lot Tim.Tim: All right.

Todd: So Tim, you want to talk about road trips?Tim: Yeah, I wanna talk about road trips.Me and my friends when we were in high school we took a lot of road trips to lots of different places.Todd: OK.Tim: We would go down to California sometimes Mexico. One time when I was living in Wyoming, in one weekend we drove from Wyoming through Colorado, New Mexico, and Mexico and back in the same weekend.Todd: Wow! Well, actually for people who are not familiar with the United States how far is that?Tim: It's a long way. I don't know. It took.. I don't know, it took probably about 15 hours one way.Todd: Wow!Tim: So, thirty hours altogether. But it was fun. We drove down to Mexico had a good night a good meal, a little bit of drinksand drove back the next day.Todd: So you went to Tijuana?Tim: No, we went to Ciudad Juarez.Todd: OK. Nice.Tim: That was really fun and a lot of other trips we took when I lived in Oregon when we'd go down to California and we'd surf.Todd: Oh, really?Tim: Yeah!Todd: Oh, you're a surfer?Tim: A little bit, a little bit of surfer.Todd: OK. What kind of car do you drive? What do you use for this road trip?Tim: Well, typical American a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Big vehicle, lots of gas but a lot of fun.Todd: Oh man, you're from Oregon you're supposed to be a tree-hugger!Tim: I know. I know. But they're good. One rule we had on our road trips was any lake or big body of water we had to stop and swim in. It was a good thing to do.Todd: Well, you live in Japan now. Do you ever do road trips in Japan?Tim: I took a road trip from Niigata up around Hokkaido and back, so it was a long road trip actually.Todd: OK. Wow! What's the difference between a road trip in Japan and a road trip in America?Tim: Well, a road trip in Japan..it's a little bit more difficult to get around, it's a little bit more expensive. In America, road tripping is sort of.. something a lot of people do.Todd: Yeah.Tim: And in Japan, when we do that it is a little bit strange, a little bit different, not very normal.Todd: Yeah, that's true. OK. Great, thanks a lot Tim.Tim: All right.

https://anchor.fm/sparerare/message - If you have questions, want to say hello, or want to be a guest or share a song let me know!! Guest: RareRuby - https://www.instagram.com/rareruby86/ Why did you choose the song? Well, I was preparing that super long episode about those strong women in Country Music lol, and of course, I also did that karaoke so good ol Tim McGraw came up. When you hear Tim you thing both George Jones and Strait Alan Charlie Clint Kenny well the list could go forever but let me stop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHtLF6IicNk - I Like It, I Love It by Tim McGraw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW5UEW2kYvc - Chattahoochee by Alan Jackson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbj48b6CHzs&list=PLunbdeon5mzoYVaK365rlp13jhInqZIaN - She'll Leave You With a Smile by George Strait What mood were you in before/after the song? Again, I am from Texas I fell in love with a Country Boy or two even one in Alaska. Yes, I love Rock don't get upset when we get into Elton, Billy (all of them) and well that's a long list haha... Would you be willing to Karaoke or sing-a-long? Sorry but you will be tolerating me slightly Please specify the lyrics that motivated you: Tim: All of them stepping up to be a man, to commit to the woman that caught cha. Alan: All lol George: At first she's gonna come on strong Like she'll love you all night long Like it's going out of style Then she'll leave you with a smile and... Well, you can't help but wonder Why you can't help but love her But you can't help love her And all that hurtin' was more than worth it It's written all over your face The following topics may stem from the song: Religion Music Community Motivation Respect Discouragement Country Fun Confidence Courtesy Love Relationships Growth - A hot summer day which it keeps being every day in TEXAS lol --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sparerare/support

For episode sixteen of season two, Tim and Tuesday reflect on how sheltering in place, during COVID-19, is presenting an opportunity for the discovery of other parts of ourselves and how unsettling that can be. Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.2.16 — SHOW NOTESTim: This week on the podcast we are going to talk about being “unsettled.”Tues: I think this feels really timely. Last week we hit the month mark and folks had been doing so much to get everything pulled together - how do I get my kids figuring school out, how do I figure out what I am going to do for work? The first month of quarantine was filled with activity, of figuring it out, and then last week it was like, “oh, this is what we are doing” and I feel like things just kind of busted loose. Last week you saw people get more anxious, more depressed, more angry. The first month was all hands on deck and last week it turned to “oh, my gosh, we are doing this thing” and I think it’s deeply unsettling. Tues: Several headlines I’ve read have talked about the second COVID crisis will be around mental health. There is no place to go for our coping besides internal and often that spills out to the people external to us. Tim: What I am beginning to discover, under the boredom piece for me, is a thirst for freedom. The desire to not feel trapped. A lot of that is related to being sent away to school for so long at such a young age and then essentially being confined within an institution for so much of my young life. So I am doing a lot of things that allow me to seek that feeling of not being trapped. Walking has been one of those. Tim: I’ve been roaming through boredom, depression and desperately trying to find tasks to keep me busy. I put on a mixed tape the other day and it was perfect. It was like 25 year old me had made it for me for this moment. I wonder what other parts of us we are discovering to help us in these times? Tim: I’m finding in the midst of what feels trapped, and quite dark and quite uncomfortable, and quite painful for me sometimes in terms of what I am encountering inside myself, I’m also finding there are these moments where something just clicks. A little bit of beauty happens, a little bit of synchronicity takes place that creates that feeling of freedom. It’s a funny world right now because I feel like I am wandering between these multiple different states. Tues: I know what you mean! I feel like at the beginning of this sheltering in place/quarantine it was day-by-day and now it feels like hour-by-hour. I listen to a lot of podcasts and people are talking about a going back to things that gave them comfort earlier in their life - music, old TV show, old clothes, old friends from high school… familiarity. People are seeking some of that in the midst of all this uncertainty. That feels really interesting to me because I think we are both pretty self-reflective people and yet this period is almost making us go to the root, of the root, of the root. Now we can’t get away from it - you have to go into that particular thing and get to know the nuances of it. Right now I try to turn toward it - walk/run, journal, etc. Tim: There is a lot of forgiveness in our house at the moment; not making things bigger than they already are in our house and that seems to be very healthy. There is a lot of letting things go in terms of the emotional tennis that is happening in households right now. Tues: A lot of it is acknowledging that it is a hard time for everyone so you can give grace. Tim: We are all facing our shadows. I know it might sound trite but now we are getting the opportunity to deal with our deepest, darkest shit. So many of the structures that are in place are now falling away and we are now being faced with things that we structured our lives to avoid. Tues: It might be trite… but it is also true and it is a choice. We can or we can’t. We will or we won’t. I don’t think we have too. I think that we could all stumble through this, coping the best we can - in good ways and in bad ways - and come out the other side with not a bit more insight or self-reflection and just having survived. I feel really strongly that if my mind is going to try and take me to these places, I am going to go. I am going to try and use it as an opportunity, and I won’t take every opportunity and I won’t do it perfectly, but the world doesn’t get to stop and slow down that often and you don’t get to really look and have these things come up. The things, the very things, we have tried to avoid are coming up. We do have a choice and we don’t have to make it everyday… some days you can just listen to really loud music. Tim: In addition to all this personal practice that is going on, some of the stuff we have been navigating is in our business. How do you and I distribute wealth between us during this period? How are we tending to, and looking after, our subcontractors? Who needs what during a period of crisis? Tues: We know that conversations on equity can be a challenge at the best of times and then when you have a lot of economic uncertainty, that we’re facing, it’s quite interesting. We just said that this gives us the opportunity to look at things we haven’t had to look at, we’ve structured ourselves in a way that we haven’t had to look at them and so that would also be true in terms of any money issues. We haven’t, either personally or professionally, had to go too deeply into them. We’ve had some really good conversations that had to be quite explicit and frank. What does it mean that you [Tim] have family money and I don’t? What does that mean when we are running a business together that is having some contraction and the partners in the business have a different level of wealth to fall back into / that they can count on? What does that mean going forward? What does that mean as we do things that are building the business but are not billable hours? Because I [Tues] have less family wealth, we should give me more billable hours but you [Tim] are still working? It’s quite complex and emotional and it’s about our good friendship and it’s about this lens we have. How do we build a company together across class?Tues: This is what is happening now with The Outside. This is part of the “unsettled” part of this pandemic. The decisions now are not just short-term, it’s medium and long-term and what does this mean for us across time, and what does that mean for us in our different circumstances and what does this mean for our different perspectives around our company income and revenue. All of it is up now. It’s coming up for us personally, for our company, and for our clients. One of the things we’ve talked about is that there is a tendency to go back to a more traditional, mechanistic, command and control leadership right now. But, some of the people in our client base are thinking this is a time when we could choose do be different here. It’s a choice point in the organization. That’s happening at every level we’re working with right now. It’s all levels, all the time. Tues & Tim: All of our online courses are free right now until the end of June 2020. Check them out!Song: “A message to myself,” by Roo PanesPoem: “Untitled,” from the book “Lele Kawa: The rituals of Pele," by Taupouri TangaroOlelo i ke akaKa hele ho’okahi eMamina ka leoHe leo wale no eSpeaking to the shadowIs what one does when travelling aloneTreasure the voiceFor it gives sound to the thoughts otherwise dormant.Subscribe to the podcast now—in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anywhere else you find podcasts. New episodes will be available every second Tuesday. If you’d like to get in touch with us about something you heard on the show, reach us at podcast@findtheoutside.com. Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.Duration: 35:29Produced by: Mark Coffin @ Sound Good StudiosTheme music: Gary BlakemoreEpisode cover image: source See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How will she use her chemistry degree if elected mayor? Will she sell her Highland Park house to Tim? All questions answered. All the stars.

Japanese thoughts on risk are changing, but they are changing slowly. Many people still consider failure to be a permanent condition, and that makes it hard to take risks, or in some cases even to be associated with risks. Today we talk with Hajime Hirose, one of Japan's new breed of serial entrepreneurs. Hajime has started companies in three different countries and several different industries.  We talk about the challenges and importance of going global and how a Japanese founder ended up running a Chinese company that IPOed in New York. And of course, we also talk about how difficult it is for startups to combat rumors in Japan, even when everyone knows those rumors to be false. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes The road to China runs through Seattle Today's management crisis in Chinese and Indian companies Why leave Japan to start a startup Why not all publicity is good publicity in Japan Why the truth cannot fix lies How to survive when your competition is giving away their product for free What startups are best started outside Japan Links from the Founder Connect with Hajime on LinkedIn Hajime's latest project, Datadeck PTMind's PT Engine Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me. You know, there aren’t many serial entrepreneurs in Japan. The reason for that is, well, the same reason why we don’t have a lot of angel investors in Japan. Until very recently, the idea of both startup success and startup failure was permanent. If your startup succeeded, you were expected to be running it until either you or the company expired, and if you failed, well, if you failed, you were done. Until very recently, failure was considered a permanent condition. No one was inclined to give you a second chance, but things are changing, and today, I would like to introduce you to Hajime Hirose, a Japanese serial entrepreneur who has built and sold startups and also bankrupted them. We talk about how Japanese attitudes towards startups are changing, but how in Japan, a bad rumor, even a completely unfounded rumor can kill and otherwise promising startup. We also talk about the importance and the difficulty of going global, and the unlikely tale of a Japanese man running a Chinese startup that ended up IPOing in New York, and we also talk about Hajime’s old startup story that wheezed its way through London, Shanghai, Redmond, Jakarta, and yes, of course, Tokyo. But you know, Hajime tells that story much better than I can, so let us get right to the interview. [Interview] [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey"  ] Tim: Cheers! Hajime: Cheers! Tim: All right, so I am sitting here with Hajime Hirose, the what the future founder of BuzzElement, and a few other startups as well, so thanks for sitting down with me. Hajime: Well, thank you. I’m really excited because I’m a big fan of your show and I’m really thrilled to be on this side of the show. Tim: Well, listen, I’m excited to have you here because there are relatively few serial entrepreneurs in Japan. So, I’m looking forward to this conversation. Your first real international business was in China, but before we get to that, let us back up and talk about how you wound up there. Hajime: So, I was born in Tokyo, grew up in Yokohama, and I went to CIO for university, and I’ve been living outside of Japan for the last 26 years. Tim: And, you ended up working for Microsoft, right? Hajime: That’s right. Tim: Back when MSN was still a thing. Hajime: That’s right, yeah. So, that was back when Microsoft just bought Hotmail back in 1998. Tim: Oh, the good old days. Hajime: Yeah, that was good, that was really fun. So, I was lucky to be the only two Japanese guys on the project.

Japan had been a global leader in robotics for decades, but recently the traditional Japanese leaders have been losing ground to the better-funded and better-publicized firms coming out of America and China. Mujin is changing that. While iRobot and Boston Dynamics have been grabbing headlines and YouTube views, Mujin has been quietly breaking ground with a series of real-world commercial successes in deploying the next generation of industrial robots. Perhaps Mujin's largest achievement to date has been their project for Chinese e-commerce giant JD, in which they developed the world's first fully-automated logistics warehouse where robots unload the trucks, stock the shelves, and them pick and pack the items for shipment without human intervention. Today we talk with Issei Takino, who founded Mujin with his co-founder Rosen Diankov, and he explains why Japan looks at robots in a fundamentally different way than Western countries do, and how that will lead to a significant competitive advantage. It's an interesting conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes How to get the ecosystem to adopt your platform Why robots have not yet taken over industry (or the world) How to get your first customers in robotics How to get feedback from reluctant Japanese customers When being a Japanese startup is an advantage How America and Japan view robotics and automation differently Advice for starting companies with multi-cultural teams The critical differences between Japanese and American universities Links from the Founder Everything you ever wanted to know about Mujin Friend Issei on Facebook See Mujin's robots in action Video of Mujin's automated logistics warehouse (this is very cool) [shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, Straight Talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Today we're going to talk about robots, specifically industrial robots. Now Japan has been a global leader in robotics for decades, but in recent years, Japanese firms seem to be losing ground to the better funded and better publicized companies coming out of the US and China. Well today we're going to sit down with the founder of a company that is already starting to change that. Issei Takino founded Mujin with his co-founder Rosen Diankov and they have developed a kind of android for industrial robots, that is to say, it's a generic operating system that works with almost any hardware and works far more effectively than anything else in the industry. Issei and I go into some of the details during the interview but perhaps the clearest illustration of Mujin success was a project, they did for Chinese e-commerce giant JD. They developed the world's first fully automated logistics warehouse. It's a massive facility but almost no humans work there. Robots unload the trucks, stock the shelves, pick the items for delivery and then pack them and ship them out. It's hard to explain in an audio podcast, so check out the video. We've got a link at the site and it's really amazing to watch. Issei and I also talked about how Japan and the West look at robots very differently and how that might be holding America back. He also shares his experience and advice about founding and running a start-up as a multinational team and we talked about why these kinds of Japanese foreign partnerships are going to become more common and more important in the coming years. But you know, Issei tells that story much better than I can, so let's get right to the interview. [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1404"  info_text="Sponsored by"  font_color="grey" ] Tim: All right! So I'm sitting here with Issei Takino of Mujin, the maker of controllers for industrial robots. So thanks for sitting down with me. Issei: Oh! It's my pleasure, thank you, thank you for inviting.

We are back to close off our four day marathon of Tim Allen Christmas movies as we look at the 2004 film Christmas With The Kranks. Is this movie worth all the hate? Why do both Ben & Colin agree it's dumb but still can enjoy it? Why is Tim Allen's character the only non-asshole in this film but is treated and portrayed like an asshole? Why does Colin hate blinking things so much? Why is Bev so sexy? How great is Felicity Huffman? Why is there one scene in this movie that is downright hilarious and needs more praise? And is this worth watching more than any of The Santa Clause films? Tune in and find out to get yourself fully in the Christmas spirit!★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

We're back to continue our four day bingefest of Tim Allen Christmas movies as we now move into the third and thankfully final entry in The Santa Clause franchise with the third and worst of the bunch The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. Can Colin & Ben say anything positive about this film? Why is Martin Short so amazing and why do we even care about his characters sexuality? What is with the terrible fart jokes? Why is Neil kinda sucky this time around? Where the hell is Charlie? Why do we miss Bernard? Why does Lucy suck so much? Why is this movie pointless with basically no plot? What 10 minutes of this movie are great and could've made this a more fun film? And why are we subjecting ourselves to this garbage? Just click the download and listen to get it over with already.★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

It's time to continue our special Tim Allen look at Christmas as we move past the classic that was The Santa Clause and get into the...eh...next movie that is trying to be a movie in the franchise with The Santa Clause 2. Why is Colin so into Curtis? Why is Ben so not into Curtis? Why does Lucy suck so much? What is the deal with Chet? Why do reindeer talking suck so much? Is toy Santa cool or creepy? Why is Elizabeth Mitchell so awesome? Why does Colin turn into 'the Canadian Hulk' during this episode? And how does this movie get compared to Titanic? With only a few days till Christmas, it's time to make sure you're all caught up and entertained so get clicking!★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Let's get you in the Christmas spirit as we bring you the first of four movies in the lead up to the big day with our 'Christmas Tim Allen' month by looking at the 1994 classic that everyone should love and will love after hearing our recap The Santa Clause. Just why is Charlie often a dick in this movie but actually not that bad that Ben will hate on him? Why would so much of this movie struggle to work in a 2017 world? Why did Colin think Tim Allen was his dad? Why is this movie still so funny all these years later? How awesome is Judge Reinhold? Is Denny's that great? Why is everyone so horrible to Scott in this movie about his son believing in Santa? What is with all the fat shaming? Why do E.L.F.S suck and why should Kenny Vadas just fall over and disappear? And why is Neil so awesome? Click away and you will find out!★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

In this episode, Tim and Scott talk about: Diane Nelson and Geoff Johns talk about the future strategy of DC Films! How will Warner Brothers be positioning their superhero films differently than Marvel? When was Joss Whedon brought in to work on Justice League? Does Warner Brothers and DC Films actually use the fan favorite term DCEU? We have the evidence! Teen Titans Go! is set for a 2018 release! What is the box office prediction for Justice League? Danny Elfman talks about his work on Justice League! How exactly will previous Superman and Batman themes be used in Justice League? Will Aquaman, Cyborg, and The Flash get their own theme music? A new Justice League trailer has been shown to theatre exhibitors! Justice League debuts some new character posters! Zack Snyder shows off some more Justice League storyboards! What aspect ratio did Zack Snyder film Justice League in? A Flashpoint script has reportedly been turned in! Geoff Johns photobombs David Sandberg's Instagram fun! Armie Hammer comments on fan art of him as Green Lantern and Shazam! Margot Robbie comments on how she wants to see the love story between Harley Quinn and Joker end! Director Chris McKay gives an update on casting for Nightwing! Mark Hamill gives props to Jared Leto's Joker! James Cameron continues to knock the achievements of the Wonder Woman film. Saturn Girl is coming to Supergirl... but will it be enough for Tim? All of this and much more! Where to find us: Follow The Suicide Squadcast on Twitter at @SuicideSquadcst Follow Tim on Twitter at @Allenfire Follow Scott on Twitter at @ScottDC27 Email us at SuicideSquadcast@gmail.com Subscribe to The Suicide Squadcast Network: The Suicide Squadcast:  iTunes / Google Play / Stitcher / RSS DCTV Squadcast:  iTunes / Google Pl!y / Stitcher / RSS DC Comics Squadcast:  iTunes / Google Play / Stitcher / RSS Fans Without Borders: iTunes / Google Play / Stitcher / RSS The show's intro music was composed by Tim Yoko. The show's outro music was composed by Jordan Funk. We are a proud member of the Batman Podcast Network! Please go check out the other great shows that can be found there!

Adam Zickerman discusses his 90-day journey of religiously dedicating himself to following a ketogenic diet here in Episode 25 of the InForm Fitness Podcast.  Adam reveals the challenges of sticking to the ketogenic diet along with some misconceptions and the dramatic results.Here is a link to the website Adam mentions in this episode:  http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/ketosis-advantaged-or-misunderstood-state-part-i Don't forget Adam's Zickerman's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution.  You can buy it in Amazon by  clicking here: http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTenTo find an Inform Fitness location nearest you to give this workout a try, please visit www.InformFitness.com.  At the time of this recording we have locations in Manhattan, Port Washington, Denville, Burbank, Boulder, Leesburg and Reston.If you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question.  The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. For information regarding the production of your own podcast just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.comThe transcript to the entire episode is below: Adam: You know when you're wearing clothes, my lean muscular build, it's hard to know that I was getting a little bit of a spare tire underneath them, but I was getting a little bit of a spare tire, but besides that, there were two things. One, my chronic back problems which you covered last episode, and I wanted to do whatever I could to ameliorate these back issues. Consistent and safe back exercises are one of them, and the other thought I had was maybe my diet is affecting my back, because I was reading a lot about the typical American diet and it's inflammatory. I'm thinking I might have an inflammation issue going, my back keeps going into spasm, it's probably chronically inflamed. If I can not only exercise my back properly but maybe reduce my chronic inflammation, that might be my answer. Tim: InForm Nation, welcome to episode 25 of the InForm Fitness podcast. Twenty minutes with New York Times bestselling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. I'm Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting Network and a client of InForm Fitness. Joined as always by Sheila Melody, Mike Rogers, and of course Adam Zickerman. Okay team, at the time of this recording, spring has just sprung, summer is just a few months away, and I'm sure a good portion of InForm nation is already thinking about summer which means they're thinking about slimming down a little or in some cases a lot, so dieting is on their minds. We've all heard of, and I'm sure participated, in at least a few nutrition plans, like the paleo diet, the Atkin's diet, or the one that I really enjoyed a few years ago was the slow carb diet from Tim Ferris. Most recently I had tremendous success by just eating cleanly as you describe Adam in chapter three of your book, Power of Ten: The Slow Motion Fitness Revolution.So Adam, you visited LA. just a few months ago when we recorded the Adam in LaLa Land episode and frankly, you looked extremely fit. So in the last episode, you mentioned that we're going to talk about a diet that you've been on for the last X amount of days, and my question is why did you even consider going on a diet in the first place because you don't look like you need to go on one.Adam: I picked up a few lessons from my female friends and I know how to dress to hide it.Tim: You wear Spanx, that's what you're telling me?Mike: Spanx and New York black. Everyone in New York knows how to hide it.Adam: Hide our emotions.Tim: You don't hide your emotions in New York, come on.Adam: The people in L.A want to hide their emotions.Tim: We're the passive aggressive ones.Sheila: Oh no, we want to talk about our emotions.Tim: That's down in the south where they're passive aggressive, but anyway, we digress. You mentioned the diet, and here's a guy, the guru, the InForm Fitness and you're fit. So what prompted you to go on a diet?Adam: I'm so glad you asked me that question, because you know the other question I get asked in a similar vein is why do you work out Adam, you look great. Sheila: You say because I never want to look like you.Adam: That just reminded me of something Yogi Bear once said. Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore, it's always too crowded. So listen, why did I go on this diet. Well first of all, diets are not always about weight loss, fat loss. Diets are about health, or they should be. Now I know that anyone who goes on a diet, their number one concern is I want to lose body fat, which is a noble goal because being overweight has health problems associated with it. Now I did want to lose a little weight first of all, because I always said that I hide it well half-jokingly, because the other half, I did need to lose a couple of pounds and it is true that when you're wearing clothes, my lean muscular build, it's hard to know that I was getting a little bit of a spare tire underneath them, but I was getting a little bit of a spare tire, but besides that, there were two things. One, my chronic back problems which you covered last episode, and I wanted to do whatever I could to ameliorate these back issues. Consistent and safe back exercises are one of them, and the other thought I had was maybe my diet is affecting my back, because I was reading a lot about the typical American diet and it's inflammatory. I'm thinking I might have an inflammation issue going, my back keeps going into spasm, it's probably chronically inflamed. If I can not only exercise my back properly but maybe reduce my chronic inflammation, that might be my answer. So for years, I've been reading about the ketogenic diet, and for years I was poo-pooing it.Tim: Why?Adam: Because I had a vast misunderstanding about what a ketogenic diet was. Basically using ketones for fuel. I'll get into what a ketone is a little bit later, but my understanding of ketones was when your body is using ketones for fuel, or if you're producing a lot of ketones, I always understood that to be very dangerous. In my mind without realizing it, I was really thinking about what they call ketoacidosis, which is much different than nutritional ketosis, using ketones for fuel from a nutritional point of view, as opposed to something very dangerous called ketoacidosis. That was where the confusion comes in. Whenever you talk to a doctor or a nutritionist and say I want to go into ketosis, they say it's dangerous, and being in ketoacidosis is very dangerous but you cannot go into ketoacidosis just by eliminating carbohydrates or going to what they call nutritional ketosis. Ketoacidosis, let me explain what that it is. It usually afflicts people with Type I diabetes. Type I diabetics cannot produce insulin, and when you cannot produce insulin, when you eat carbohydrates, the sugar starts building up and building up, and what happens is the body can't utilize that sugar, because the insulin is not there to use that sugar and bring it into the fat cells and the muscle cells, or bring it into any cell that needs that for energy. So the body, if it can't get glucose for energy, it starts metabolizing fat for fuel. That's where it's going to get it's energy from, and it starts going crazy producing these ketones. You see ketones come from fat, the metabolism of fat. An alternative sense of energy for the body are ketones, fat gets broken down into ketones, carbohydrates get broken down into glucose and when the body breaks down carbohydrates for glucose and those glucose molecules can't be used, the body will say okay, let me go break down some body fat, get some ketones out of it, and utilize that for fuel. So it's another source of currency if you will, and if you're a Type I diabetic, your body goes crazy producing these ketones and you end up having so many ketones that you go into an acidic state, a dangerously acidic state where basically all functions of the body cannot produce and cannot function when you're in such a high acidic state. In other words, we have to have a pH level that's very, very stable, like about normal, about 7. Our pH is about 7, that's the normal functioning pH of the human body. When you start having all these ketones that start going through the roof — ketones are acidic by the way, and ketones that are not being checked or regulated, start going through the roof and you are in a very dangerous state. So a Type I diabetic can very often go into ketoacidosis and they have to go the hospital, they have to get the injections, and usually it's a diabetic that's not taking care of themselves. You cannot go into that acidic state being in what I have been in the last ninety days which is called nutritional ketosis. Nutritional ketosis is a state in where you body instead of using glucose for fuel, not because there's no insulin, but because you're not eating anything that's going to produce a lot of glucose, your body says well I need energy, so I'm going to start using fat for fuel. Every cell cannot use actual fat for energy, they have to break down the fat. Just like we have break down carbohydrates for glucose, we have to break down fat, and we're breaking them down into fat and these ketone bodies are being used for fuel. Well there's a lot of evidence right now that's showing that these ketogenic diets which are to break it down into macronutrients about 70-75% fat, about 10% protein, maybe 15% protein, and then the rest which is about 5% carbohydrates.Tim: Now immediately, red flags are flying all over when you say the diet is made up of 75%  fat. Now let's drill down on that a little bit more. We're not talking cheeseburgers.Adam: Well we're not talking cheeseburgers with the bread, but we are talking cheeseburgers. I will have red meat, I will have cheese. Red meat has to be grass fed, not this factory raised cow. So the quality of the foods that you're eating is also very important, so I eat grass fed beef and beef, the fat in the beef is very good for you. What you have to be careful of, this is what I realized and this is a very common mistake that people make on ketogenic diets, that they think it's a high fat, high protein diet, but it's not really high protein. Having too much protein can actually produce an insulin response or produce sugar, because protein can be converted into glucose, it's called gluconeogenesis, and it can be almost as bad as actually eating carbohydrates. A lot of people will eliminate their carbohydrates and they'll end up having tons of red meat, which is a lot of protein.Tim: That sounds like the Atkin's diet to me.Sheila: That's what I was just going to say.Adam: The Atkin's diet, in essence, a ketogenic diet and the misinterpretation of the Atkin's diet of a ketogenic diet is that the image is like a bunch of caveman sitting around gnawing on a dead animal or something like that and just eating fat and bacon and protein all day long. It's not like that, it's mostly vegetables that are saturated in fat like olive oil, or coconut oil or avocado oil. Salads that are doused in that kind of fat, so getting vegetables or other types of oils and avocados in general, grass fed meat, pasture raised chickens, eggs, and of course wild fish. That is my diet, and it's not like I'm eating tons of meat. I'm eating six ounces of a steak, I'm eating tons of brussel sprouts that have been roasted in coconut oil.Tim: All sounds good to me so far.Sheila: Probably 85% of the time I eat exactly what you just described.Adam: I committed to eating this way without exception for ninety days. I started at the beginning of this year.  Here we are. Tim: Where are you now at the time of this recording?Adam: It's a coincidence but I am literally, today, on my 90th day. It started January 3rd, which is a Tuesday. So I don't know if it's the 90th day, but I just finished my twelfth week starting January 3 and this is a Tuesday. So today is the last day of my twelfth week.Mike: I don't think 90 is divisible by seven.Tim: Well he's close.Mike: I've got my advocates in the corner there.Tim: So nonetheless, let's review.Adam: By the way, at the beginning I said why I did this. I thought it'd help my back, anti inflammatory. Ketogenic diets are well suspected to be anti-inflammatory. The second reason why I wanted to do this diet was because I had my annual checkup and I'm in my early 50s now, but 50s nonetheless, and my blood work is creeping the wrong way. They're starting to get on the high side of normal.Tim: Let me ask you, is that prior to going on the diet?Adam: Prior to going on the diet, I had my annual checkup and the results came in and he said to me hey, nothing to be alarmed about at this point but you're trending the wrong way. You're C-reactive protein is creeping which is an inflammatory marker, and he said your cholesterol is creeping up, it's not too high per se but it's on the higher side of normal. My A1C which is an indicator of your blood sugar was creeping up again on a high side of normal. I was like wow. These are all things that indicate that I'm going towards what many Americans go towards which is metabolic syndrome. It reminded me the same situation that Dr. Peter Attia, his story when he started his quest on ketogenic diets, and he was in the same situation. He worked out all the time, he thought he ate well most of the time. We think eating well is eating whole grain breads, and fruits, and occasionally what's so bad about having a beer here and there, and next thing you know, in a day you're still ingesting 250 grams of carbohydrates without even thinking about it. So he started taking control of it as well, and when I saw that my blood numbers were going up and then I read what Dr. Attia went through as well, I was like holy cow that's me. So that also prompted me, I wanted to see if going on a ketogenic diet would change these numbers. Well this is the 90th day so I'm about to get those numbers checked, so I'm going to report back on this but when I can talk about now is how I feel. Tim: Let's start with your back.Adam: And what has happened. First of all my back, in combination with what I've been doing with my lower back exercises and staying consistent with that, my back has never felt better. I can sit for hours in a car, or I can sit for hours at my desk, and get up sideways.Tim: And you're giving this ketogenic diet credit for assisting with that.Adam: First of all, I'm a sample size of one, so this is scientific at all, but I am giving it credit. That in conjunction with taking care of my back with the exercises. So I don't know where the cause and effect is because I've been doing a couple of things at once, but the big teller is going to be obviously the blood work that I get done soon. Besides that and besides the fact that my back feels better, I've lost fifteen pounds of weight that you didn't think that I needed to lose. So I look a lot better naked now, so I don't have to wear clothes anymore. I don't have to wear a T-Shirt to the pool anymore.Mike: You know when your body gets a little bit smaller, it gives the illusion that other things are bigger.Adam: You have that as well. Big thing that I noticed was my digestion. My digestion changed dramatically. I don't have upset stomach, my elimination if you know what I'm talking about has been undramatic, it's been beautiful.Sheila: It's a beautiful thing.Tim: Well your good friend Dr. Oz would be proud of that.Mike: Maybe this will get edited out, maybe it won't, but I'm just curious. What does beautiful mean? Tim: That actually is so it will not be edited out, so describe beautiful? You mean like one clean long — Adam: Exactly, tapered on both ends, perfect.Tim: Dr. Oz was his thing right?Adam: It's embarrassing, especially since you're talking about me.Mike: You don't sound like you're embarrassed.Adam: I am. You've got to remember that this is someone who is too shy to urinate in front of his wife. Mike: I'm going to remind you that you're the one who is talking about himself right now. Tim: So nonetheless there's a lot of fiber in this diet and it's really helping Adam a lot, so good.Sheila: That's really, really very interesting and I want to ask a question about is there a difference in how women react to this diet as opposed to how men react to this diet? Coming off that interview we had a few weeks ago with Dr. Sylvia Tera and The Secret Life of Fat, and how different men and womens' makeup is and how we process fat and everything. It sounds like something I'd like to try, and I feel like I've been kind of doing this for the most part.Tim: I think she's committing, I think she should jump on 90 days.Adam: I'm not sitting here saying everyone should jump on the ketogenic diet bandwagon first of all. I need to make that disclaimer. First of all, women are different and we're all different. I'm different from another man, and women certainly have their issues. When you talk about nutrient partitioning and that no matter what you eat, some of it is going to be partitioned to fat. Hormonal issues with women as they get older, all kinds of things. Genetics for men and women are different amongst ourselves and all these things play into it for sure, but having said that, sugar is bad. Sugar is bad, sugar is inflammatory. There is nothing good that comes out of sugar and excessive carbohydrates. I don't believe being in ketosis is dangerous anymore, and this idea of eating a lot of fat, even if it's saturated fat, especially if it's saturated fat, is not bad for you. It's been shown over and over again that dietary fat does not raise your cholesterol, so just check that box off. It's not true, it is just not true that eating egg yolks and eating red meat raises your cholesterol, that is not what is raising your cholesterol. The last ten, fifteen years have been really showing that. My blood work will show this, if I go to my blood work and my cholesterol is through the roof I'm going to have to eat my words. It might even be another cause of it, but the thing is if all my triglycerides are good and inflammatory makers are lowered and my cholesterol happens to stay on a higher side, and everything else is really, really good, I'm not going to worry about high cholesterol. High cholesterol, high LDLs are not a very good marker on heart disease.Mike: On its own.Adam: On its own. Now there's this other test that Dr. Attia actually told me to get which is an NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance test, to test for your LDLP. See when you go to the doctor and you get your cholesterol and blood work done, you're getting blood work for your LDLC. LDLC is how much cholesterol, low density cholesterol is in your blood, whereas the LDLP is showing you how many LDL proteins are in your blood. I'm getting technical right now, but it's a different marker and a much better marker and indicator of potential heart disease, this LDLP. So I'm going to get that done, and see if my LDLP is nice and low, and if that is, regardless of what my LDLC is or total cholesterol is, I'm not going to be worrying about it. Again, my A1C, my C reactive protein, these markers, if they stat going down after ninety days of eating, I'm not kidding you, 70% of my diet being fat, I'll be pretty convinced. At least for myself. Let me tell you about my experience psychologically.Tim: I'm curious how you managed this, because it seemed like a lot of drastic changes.Adam: This is why I'm not necessarily telling people to just go on this ketogenic diet. First of all, I'm not a nutritionist, I just play one on TV. So I'm a nutritionist, secondly, I'm not going to lie, it's not easy to adjust to this type of diet. If you're used to eating grains and carbohydrates — I'm essentially a vegetarian that is saturating their vegetables with saturated fat and all kinds of fats, and having small portions of animal protein, whether it be a chicken or a fish or a cow, all well raised, but they're small quantities. I'm not eating a lot. I'm also intermittent fasting. I'll go at least two or three times a week, I'll go anywhere from eighteen to twenty four hours without eating. I'll be drinking lots of liquids, I'll be drinking homemade beef broth or chicken broth, and that's it. So that's all I eat, one meal all day.Tim: So tell us your schedule Adam. So with this intermittent fasting, what time are you stopping eating at the end of the day?Adam: I'll eat dinner.Tim: At what time?Adam: Anywhere between five and seven most days. So let's say I finish eating seven. I won't eat again until at least two or three o'clock the next day. On some cases I won't eat again until dinner the next day.Mike: When you work as much as we do, I've got to be honest with you, time flies and you sometimes forget about food. I'm not as strict as Adam is, but I'm probably doing about 85% or 90% of what he is doing in regards to the ketogenic model, and the fasting model without even trying to.Adam: We work a lot and that speaks to one of the techniques that people recommend to help you through these intermittent fasts and that's distraction techniques. So when your mind keeps saying eat, eat, eat, distract yourself, pick up your guitar, write a letter, do something else. Distract yourself. A lot of this hunger by the way, is psychological, we're just not used to it mentally, but besides that, at the beginning, your body is physically wanting that food but once you start utilizing your fat for fuel and you become what they call keto-adapted where your body is primed to really use fat for fuel, and that takes a couple of weeks. Three weeks, four weeks sometimes. The first there or four weeks was the toughest because I was not adapted yet, so I was very hungry. Now, well it's 4:30 and I haven't eaten yet today. Last time I ate was dinner time around five yesterday.Mike: That's a lie, he had two celery sticks from me.Adam: That's true, it's two celery sticks so I broke my fast. Honestly I grabbed them because they were there, it was not because I was dying to eat something, and if I was dying to eat something, I certainly wouldn't have picked that.Sheila: When you say you're fasting, so you mentioned the broth though. So you have that when you're fasting, or you just have nothing, you have water.Adam: I have water mostly, but yeah, we serve bone broth here, we're making our own bone broth now. We can talk about that at a later date, but yeah, that doesn't count as cheating. It's 99.9% water, it just has the minerals and the amino acids in it. So I don't consider that really cheating, but come on. Even if I was to have a small meal, the gist of it is going long periods of time without eating, and that from my understanding is the real anti-inflammatory aspect. I mean sugar causes inflammation, and eating a lot also causes inflammation because you're breaking down all this stuff and getting all these free radicals and all this oxidative work going on, and that's what causes a lot of the inflammation. Now I'm reading and I'm learning that intermittent fasting forces the body to regenerate its cells at a lot faster of a rate. There's something to that.Sheila: I also read that an easier way to do the intermittent — well, for a sixteen hour fast that you can basically do is just stop eating at seven, and then don't eat again until eleven AM. That's sixteen hours.Adam: Basically skipping breakfast.Tim: A lot of people do that anyway.Adam: But this is the problem with intermittent fasting. When I go 24 hours, I'm hungry by then. A lot of people say they can go days without eating and these are people that are really and truly keto-adapted, maybe they've been doing it for a year or more. I don't know, but so far, I haven't been able to go more than seventeen hours without all of a sudden having all those hunger pains, and at that point I just deal with it for another few hours. At that point, when I do eat, this is the hard part. You have to eat a regular, small meal. Tim: No binging.Adam: It's so easy when you're famished like that and you've gone all day without eating, it's like you want to eat lunch, breakfast, dinner, and snacks all at one time in one sitting. You have to stop yourself from doing that.Mike: That's probably one of the differences to what was going on even before you did this 90-day thing. Our lifestyle really lent itself to — none of us eat that many carbohydrates ever. Adam hasn't for a while, but when you were, you probably — I'm just guessing because you're like me, I do these all day fasts also. If I don't have some snacks or prepare my food throughout the day as I did this week, I will come home and I will eat like seven pieces of chicken and I'm not proud of it afterwards. Unless you can control that voracious urge, you're not going to get what Adam is talking about here.Tim: So Adam, as we come to end of this episode, I really would love you to encourage you to get those tests done quickly, and if you don't mind, share some of them with our audience so that we can gauge your success. The question that I have for you right now as we put the wraps on this is okay, we're close to or at day 90. Are you going to continue and forge ahead with the exact same plan that you've had for the last three months or so, are you going to augment it a little bit, what are your plans?Adam: I'm going to continue, I'm going to stay on this. I might eat a little bit more often at this point, because I don't really need to lose anymore body fat. I've got the six pack going for the summer, that's all good.Tim: Look at you, he's in his 50s and he has a six pack, that's impressive.Sheila: Do you drink coffee, can I ask that?Adam: I drink coffee. Let me speak to something Mike just said. He was saying that we're generally very good about not eating carbs, and that's partially true, with me anyway. What I mean by that is I have two young kids and I grab the M&Ms. My wife buys five-pound bags of them so she can make pancakes for the kids. Don't get me started, my wife will not let me put my kids on a ketogenic diet.Mike: My wife is a nutritionist and she would never let it happen either.Adam: Because they're afraid of ketoacidosis, but anyway what I wanted to say was this. My diet before I started this, yes, I'd go three or four days really good, and then I'll eat a whole pizza. I would never really string along many consistent weeks or days. I'd eat well one day, not very much the other day, summers come, barbecue, hotdogs, hamburgers, I just went for it. I can get away with it. You said at the beginning of this piece, Adam you don't look like you need to lose weight, why'd you start this diet? I was creeping up, and even though it appears that I eat very well, and I obviously eat well most of the time. I certainly eat good foods but I also supplement them with not such good stuff. This last 90 days, I made a commitment not to deviate from that, to be really consistent with it. Yes it's higher fat than I would normally do when I did eat well. Less protein than I would normally — that's what I learned about a ketogenic diet, that most people make the primary mistake of eating too much protein on a ketogenic diet, and so this has been the first time in my life that I've been this disciplined in my eating. I'm older now, I can't get away with what I used to get away with. The other thing that I want to say before we wrap this up is about cravings. I always hear about how you go on these low carb diets and when your body starts getting used to and primed for utilizing fat for fuel, they say you eliminate all your cravings. Bullshit. To me anyway. Maybe the physical cravings aren't there and I told you I could go all day and not really be hungry, but the truth of the matter is, I'm craving the foods that I've been giving up nonstop. To this day, 90 days into it give or take, I still crave the pizza. I still see my kids eating the pizza, I still see the buns on the hamburgers and I want it, I want it bad. I say no, the cravings are there. Maybe the physical cravings aren't there as much.Tim: What do you mean by physical cravings, define that.Adam: My stomach growling and saying man you're hungry, you've got to eat. Or feeling a little lightheaded, or physically feeling the effects of hunger. Now that I'm keto-adapted I don't have those physical — when I'm 24 hours in I start to feel them, but eighteen hours fasts, it's a no-brainer for me, it's as easy as it could be. Even though those physical things aren't there, I pass a pizza place, I pass chicken wings at the Superbowl, hot dogs at the baseball game. Beer, alcohol, I want it all, those cravings have not subsidized. I don't look at them and say ew. I want it badly, but I don't do it.Sheila: It's easier to not do it.Adam: So going forward, I'm going to continue my strict ketogenic diet for at least another 30 days. I might eat a little bit more food, but not the foods I'm not supposed to be having on a ketogenic diet. The foods I can have, add a little bit to my portions, but that's the extent of it for the next thirty days. By that point, I'll have my blood work done and we'll talk about this some more.Mike: I just think before we wrap up, I think blood tests aside, that's data that we all need. It's great to get all that stuff, but the bottom line is you've taken an educated approach to selfexperimentation and troubleshooting your body to figure out how to improve it, and your back has felt better. Do we know it's because of the ketogenic diet, maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but regardless you're in a trend where you feel so much better. Your body feels better, your back feels better. You like the way you look, you feel, it's like I almost want to say — if the tests are completely negative or there's no improvement or any markers have been changed, who cares. Looking at someone who looks healthy also. They say that they feel great but they don't look healthy, but this is not the case.Adam: Like vegans. First of all, I want to say that this is not a ringing endorsement or a push for people to go ketogenic. I'm not going to be that bull at this point to say something like that. It's definitely a viable option, and before you go into something like this, check with your doctor and do a lot of research, because compared to the recommendations by the ADA, the American Diet Association, this is not what's recommended. I want to make this disclaimer. Look into it for sure, do your research. If it sounds like you, if I sounded like you, definitely look into it. Like Mike just said, I'm very well researched. I have a background in biochemistry, I know how to read these things. I'm a little bit different than your average bear when it comes to this type of thing. If you're not in that world, you should get advice when you do something like this.Sheila: Can you give us a starting point?Adam: Yeah, I do, I recommend the doctor that I mentioned earlier. Dr. Peter Attia, and his website is called the eating academy. Read everything this guy writes, and he also refers you to other things he reads so that is a great start. The eating academy by Dr. Peter Attia. So if you're interested in possibly doing this for yourself, well pay attention to our podcast, we're going to be reporting back on this in a little while when I get my blood work back and we'll take it from there. Good luck.Tim: Okay. So don't forget to check out the show notes for a link to the website that Adam referenced, spotlighting the research done by Dr. Peter Attia. That's eatingacademy.com. Looking forward to the results of Adam's blood work to gauge the success of his three-month ketogenic dietary journey, and we should have that for you coming up in the next few weeks. Also on the way, we have a couple of interviews that we're really excited about here at the InForm Fitness Podcast. In two weeks, we'll be speaking with happiness expert, Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen has authored several books and has sold more than two million copies in thirty different languages. She has been a client of InForm Fitness for many years, and she has a popular podcast of her own, titled Happier with Gretchen Rubin. So give it a listen and even subscribe to her podcast so you can become more familiar with Gretchen before she joins us here on the show, and in the process, pick up some valuable tips on being, well, happier. Next week, we'll be talking to Dr. Martin Gaballa, the author of the One Minute Workout. Adam and Dr. Gaballa will contrast and compare high-intensity strength training like we do here at InForm Fitness, and high-intensity interval training, as described in Dr. Gaballa's book, The One Minute Workout. If you'd like to find an InForm Fitness location nearest you so you can give this high-intensity strength training workout a try for yourself, please visit informfitness.com and at the time of this recording, we have locations in Manhattan, Port Washington, Danville, Burbank, Boulder, Leesburg, and in Restin. If you aren't near an InForm Fitness location, you can always pick up Adam's book via Amazon: Power of Ten, The Once a Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution. Included in the book are several exercises that support this protocol that you canIf you aren't near an InForm Fitness location, you can always pick up Adam's book via Amazon: Power of Ten, The Once a Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution. Included in the book are several exercises that support this protocol that you can actually perform on your own at a gym nearest you. We'll have a link to Adam's book in the show notes as well. Thanks again for listening, and for Sheila Melody, Mike Rogers, and Adam Zickerman of InForm Fitness, I'm Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting Network.Thanks again for listening, and for Sheila Melody, Mike Rogers, and Adam Zickerman of InForm Fitness, I'm Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting Network.

The secret to losing 20 pounds? You have to work with your fat, not against it.  Here in Episode 22 on The Inform Fitness Podcast, Adam Zickerman and his team are joined by biochemist and author of The Secret Life of Fat, Dr. Sylvia Tara.Dr. Tara explains how you can outsmart your body fat, with cutting-edge research and historical perspectives to reveal fat's true identity.   Once you understand it…you can beat it. For The Secret Life of Fat audio book in Audible click here:  http://bit.ly/TheSecretLifeofFat_IFF_PodcastTo purchase The Secret Life of Fat in Amazon click here: http://bit.ly/TheSecretLifeofFat_AmazonDon't forget Adam's Zickerman's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution.  You can buy it from Amazon by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTenTo find an Inform Fitness location nearest you to give this workout a try, please visit www.InformFitness.com.  At the time of this recording, we have locations in Manhattan, Port Washington, Denville, Burbank, Boulder, Leesburg and RestenIf you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question.  The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. For information regarding the production of your own podcast just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.comThe Transcriptions for the entire episode is below:22 The Secret Life of FatTim: Hey InForm Nation, thanks for joining us once again here for episode 22 of the InForm  Fitness Podcast, twenty minutes with New York Times bestselling author, Adam Zickerman and friends. I'm Tim Edwards with the InBound Podcasting network, and a client of InForm Fitness, and after some time off, excited to finally get back behind the mic with our team. Let's start with Sheila Melody, the co-owner and general manager of the Burbank location. Sheila, nice to see you again.Sheila: Hey Tim, great to be back with everybody again!Tim: It's been a while, and the rest of our team as always, still joining us via Skype from the Manhattan location in New York City headquarters for the InForm fitness empire. General manager Mike Rogers and the founder of InForm Fitness, Adam Zickerman. What's up gents, good to see you again!Adam: Hey guys.Mike: All is good.Tim: Adam, in your book Power of Ten: The Once a Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution, you described the three pillars necessary to achieve maximum success with the slow motion, high-intensity strength training system. For those who are just joining us for the first time, Adam please remind us of those three pillars.Adam: Exercise, rest, and nutrition.Tim: And nutrition. We spent a lot of time on this podcast discussing pillar one, exercise, and our special guest today also joining us via Skype, will allow us to dive deeper into pillar number two, which as you just mentioned Adam, is nutrition. We're pleased to welcome our guest who has a PhD in biochemistry and is the author of The Secret Life of Fat, Dr. Sylvia Tara. Glad to have you with us today.Sylvia: Great, thank you. It's terrific to be here.Tim: All four of us have spent the last couple of weeks digesting this book. I think Adam and Mike read the book, and Sheila, we listened to the book via Audible. It really helped us all change the way we look at fat, which I know is the point of the whole thing, but before we get started, Adam, I know you were the one who introduced this topic to the team here. What is it Adam that made you want to bring Sylvia on, to discuss The Secret Life of Fat?Adam: Well it was back in 2007 that I read this Scientific American article, that was called, if I remember correctly, What Fuels Fat, and it was then that I saw that Scientific American article that I realized how complicated fat is, and how complex it is. It was the first time that somebody had referred to fat as an organ, and then, recently, I'm listening to NPR and there's Dr. Tara talking about this book, which I thought the title was amazing. The Secret Life of Fat, and it reminded me of back in 2007, ten years ago, about this article I had read in Scientific American, and I was like oh my god. I had forgotten all about that, I've got to get this book and read it. You did such a great job, Dr. Tara, as far as breaking down such a complex subject and making us understand, quite honestly, how difficult it is to understand fat and we're in the personal training business, high-intensity exercise business, and all of our clients, most of them, are struggling with fat loss. I thought maybe we can use your book to prompt conversation and be honest with our clients and basically tell them what the facts are. What to expect when it comes to battling the bulge.Mike: What they're up against.Sylvia: That's a great idea, and that's also why I decided to go and do all this research, because I'm one of those people who has a lot of trouble managing weight. I always gain weight very easily, even as a child, I packed on pounds much easier than my friends who ate candy and ice cream all day long, and as I got older, it just got worse. Some of my old tricks stopped working, I had all these tricks in my twenties where I could take weight off pretty quickly if I had to, but then after having two kids, after launching a career and getting very busy, being stretched and traveling, my old tricks weren't working anymore. I went on a number of diets, there's always this new diet, and I tried a number of them every year, and sometimes they would work, they would work temporarily. Sometimes I could even gain weight on some of these diets, and I'd worked with personal trainers too, and they're all really — just [Inaudible: 00:03:59] their dogma, they have a certain philosophy they follow and one of them is you have to eat enough calories to lose weight. They were always stunned at how little I actually had to eat, and even then, I wasn't skinny, so I was about to go on yet another diet; I think paleo was all the rage and I said let me try this, and I started reading about just how complicated it was and I thought you know what, forget it. I said before I go on even one more diet, I'm going to understand everything there is to know about fat. I'm a biochemist by training, and if anyone can understand fat, I can. So I read everything, I think I pulled over a thousand articles out of the scientific literature, I read them all, and I talked to over fifty thought leaders, leading researchers around the world about this, their cutting edge research on fat. What I was finding out, which was so interesting, so astounding; it turned out that fat wasn't anything I thought it was, it's not just a reserve of calories, it's not just holding energy, waiting for us to use it. It has a whole life of its own underneath there. It can fight back when we try to lose it, it controls our thoughts about food, it controls metabolism. It can divert blood supply to itself, it's doing all these really strange things. It's as if it's another person inside of you, and if you're not equipped, if you don't understand what fat really is, you're just about bound to keep going on diets and regaining and regaining. The diet industry tends to make you think you're doing something wrong. If this diet doesn't work for you, it's really simple to follow, and then it's your fault; surely you're not staying on it, surely you're not adhering, and that's not the case. Having people feel that guilt isn't helping them, it's causing frustration and then it's leading to binging, it's leading to depressed feelings and things like that. So I think once we just educate ourselves on fat, what it is exactly, why it's so hard to lose, the better equipped we are to stay very persistent. So knowledge is power, and in this case in particular, I think just having that knowledge helped me stay on something. It also helped me not just follow siren songs, like with the new diet fad of the year, let me try that. It's like now I've got it, I know what works for me now, I can tailor my own diet. I really just felt empowered, and hopefully, some of that is what I'm trying to do with people. You don't have to follow my diet that worked for me, and I did something pretty extreme in my own experience to get off weight, but you can tailor something to work for you, depending on what you need psychologically, biologically, and for your lifestyle as well.Adam: That's a great introduction, and so while we're talking about your quest to find out exactly what fat is, why don't you explain what exactly is fat, and why is it called an organ?Sheila: Like I said, fat, the way we think of it is like this blubber. It's like this excess, greasy yellow stuff, and it's funny because I have this plastic model of fat, and when I show it to people, their first reaction is like ew, that's disgusting. We just have this whole image of what it is, but it's doing so much more tha n just sitting there as this greasy, yellow substance. It actually produces hormones that our body depends on, and these are hormones, mostly only produced by fat. So you can think of fat as not just a reserve of calories, it's an endocrine organ, like your adrenal cortex, it's like your thyroid gland, it's like any other endocrine organ we have. One of these hormones is leptin, and leptin has vast influence all over our body, I mean you'd be shocked at how much we defend on our fat for this hormone. Our brain size is linked to healthy fat, our brain size and the way we think, cognitive abilities even, is linked to an adequate supply of leptin which comes from fat. Our reproductive organs, particularly in women; if we get too low levels of fat, or if we have defective fat that's not producing leptin, we can't reproduce. Then there's bones, bone strength is reliant on fat as well. Even wound healing, this was really interesting, that leptin binds within our veins and so people that have anorexia or, again, defective fat, they don't heal as quickly. We're just at the tip of this, I think leptin was really in the 90s when it came out, and we're just discovering more and more how important it is in our body, and how much we're dependent on our fat for good health. One of the things too, is that leptin, because it does control our mind to some extent and it controls appetite, when we lose a lot of fat, like say 10% of our body weight, it has a big effect on us. Actually, our appetite will go through the roof, so leptin is released from fat cells, it goes into the blood, and it binds to the  hypothalamus region of our brain, and there's an appetite center there. So with lower levels of leptin after losing quite a bit of weight, we actually get very, very hungry, we're driven to eat. So our fat in a way is controlling itself, it's driving us to actually come back. It will also lower our metabolism, so skeletal muscle during exercise, 25% fewer calories is what we'll end up using, and 15% fewer during rest. So overall, you need 22% fewer calories after you've lost about 10% of your weight or more, compared to someone who has never lost weight. So to make that a little clearer for people, if someone is 150 pounds and they've been at that weight naturally for a good part of life, compared to someone who has lost 20 pounds, who was 170 pounds and lost 20 pounds to get to 150 pounds; the person who has lost weight to get to 150 will have 22% fewer calories than someone who is naturally there, and that's because of the effect of lowering leptin, and the reduction in metabolism we get. So a diet is not just for six months, this effect I just talked about, higher appetite and lower metabolism, it's been studied for six years, it's seemed to last for six years. I think it can even last longer, I've talked to some people who have lost weight and they say they still feel like this, they still have to eat a lot less. So don't pick a diet for six months, pick a diet that you're going to stay on for years and years, that you like. It works with you, works with your lifestyle, works with what you like to eat, and in having its effect, it's helping you lose weight. Just knowing that I think has helped people a lot. I know my editor, when he read my manuscript for the book, he actually lost 15 pounds because he actually understood fat. He knew what was going on, he understood why he was hungry at night and all these other things, biochemically what fat was doing, and it's just helped us all persist a little bit more.Tim: Dr. Tara, for our audience, of course, they're listening to the InForm Fitness Podcast because they participate with this high intensity, strength training system through Power of Ten. Let's talk about exercise for a minute, and tell us how fat is affected with high-intensity strength training, like we do at InForm Fitness.Sylvia: There's a bunch of things, so what we can do really to get smarter about fat and how we manage it, is it's one thing to not just manage it and be able to persist for long periods of time because we now understand fat, but you can start using hormones to your advantage. One of the hormones that's been talked about all the time is insulin, lots of books on insulin and fat, and making sure we have low sugar. We're not provoking too much insulin because insulin helps store calories into fat tissue, and that's all good and fine. Two other hormones to know about, one is growth hormone, that's a great fat burning hormone, and we get less of it, we have less of it as we age, and so one thing is that it peaks at night. So what you can do is extend that overnight fasting part, and that will actually extend the release of growth hormone, really important as we age. Testosterone is another great fat burning hormone, and that also decreases as we age. Now high intensity interval training is good for a number of things: one is that is associated, exercise in general is associated with the release of growth hormone and testosterone, so some strength building exercise is good for growth hormone and testosterone, and even jogging is good for both hormones. Then [Inaudible: 00:11:32] is another hormone fat releases, and this is a hormone made by fat, and it actually helps clear our blood of triglycerides and put fat, circulating fat into fat tissue where it belongs. High-intensity interval training three times a week is associated with some of these hormones as well, and it decreases visceral fat, and so how I think of it is that you're really affecting your hormones when you do HIIT. You're increasing some of these fat-busting hormones, you're helping get adiponectin, and you're reducing your visceral fat. I think it's one of the reasons that works very well, because when you think about it, you're not exercising for long, you're doing it for a short period of time but extremely intensely, and that's affecting your hormones and how your body is reacting to it. It's a great trick, I think, to just help remove stubborn fat.Sheila: I was so inspired by your book Dr. Tara because I totally related to your personal story, and I'm middle-aged, and I'm suddenly going what in the hell is going on here? So it was really nice, even being in the fitness business, being a personal trainer, being involved in all of this for my entire life basically, so I was very encouraged by your story, to make some changes and to understand why you want to add certain exercises in. The diet thing is one thing, but for me, what was a real a-ha moment was when you described why you would exercise. The hormones are listening, your fat is listening to you, so can you talk a little bit more about how your fat listens to you, and the messages you send to it. It's way more important than just the calories you're going to burn by doing that cardio or whatever exercise you're doing.Sylvia: That's exactly right. So your fat can talk and it can listen, so it'll talk by sending out hormones. It can talk to your brain and tell you how to think about food, and it can talk to your muscles and have it lower metabolism, so it's a way of communicating, and a lot of different organs in our body will emit hormones, and it has a whole communication system inside that you've never even considered and thought about. So it can talk by releasing leptin, adiponectin, and even other hormones. It can also listen, our fat, it can listen to other hormones coming from other organs. It has receptors for estrogen and testosterone on them, a number of other receptors too, so when other parts of our body starts releasing those hormones, our fat grabs it, it listens to it. It has ears if you will, and those hormones will tell fat what to do. So testosterone will help fat liquidate itself, even estrogen will, growth hormone certainly will. So when we're exercising, we're changing the communication signals in our body in a number of ways. Not only is our fat listening, but our muscles, our bones, we have a lot of different communications between these different organs, and so I think that's the smart way to fight fat. Calories do matter, I wouldn't say they don't, but more importantly is what are you doing with your hormone levels, and very small changes can actually have a pretty good effect. That's shown, I do a little writing about hormone replacement therapy which is really big here, especially in California, and it works wonders for people. I'm not ready for that yet, I wasn't ready to get external hormones injected in, but I did really work hard at ways to naturally increase some of these hormones that decline with age, including growth hormone and testosterone in particular, and adiponectin, just releasing that from fat. You did bring up women, and women in particular, we battle fat much more. I don't think there's a single woman in the world who wouldn't agree that men have an easier time losing weight than women do.Sheila: That's the other thing I got from this book, I was like oh my god, it's true! It's just the hard truth though, it's the way it is, and understanding that helps us to — what about even the way that we eat and the nutrition partitioning? Also if you could speak a little bit about the cardio, when you said women exercise and when it goes over beyond 4-600 calories, how it's different between men and women.Sylvia: Sure. Just to make everyone feel better, women are fatter, we think even in utero, compared to — from the time they exist, girl babies have more fat than boy babies, and the single best predictor is gender when it comes to fat in infants. It's not age, it's not length, not any of those things, it's gender, so many reasons for why women do gain more weight than men, but we can go over a few of them. One of them is nutrient partitioning, so when we eat something, say like a hundred calories or so, we'll actually partition more of those nutrients into fat, compared to what men will do. So as an example, if we eat about a hundred calories, we'll put about thirty calories say, for example, compared to men who might put 15 calories of those into their fat, compared to their lean tissue. So we put more in, and women actually utilize their fat differently as well. So after a time of energy depletion, like after an overnight fast, after we've slept for a long time, or after we've exercised intensely and we've depleted some energy, women's bodies will reach for fat as a source of energy, whereas men will reach more for glycogen and for protein. You would think this was a great thing because we're using our fat and we're going to lose all this weight now. The issue is that after we've replenished and after we went to energy depletion, we're actually storing fat much more efficiently than the men, two to three times more efficiently than men do. So for the one hour we're exercising or whatever, yeah, we're burning more fat off, but the rest of the day, we're packing more fat away. There's some good news for women in all of this, that even though we tend to be a little bit softer, a little bit fatter than men, the good part is that we are clearing those triglycerides out of our blood and putting it into some subcutaneous fat tissue where it belongs. So subcutaneous fat tissue is that fat tissue right underneath our skin, compared to visceral fat, which is fat underneath the stomach wall, which is less healthy. Women are very good at clearing triglycerides, fats, out of our blood and putting it into subcutaneous fat, and that keeps us more safe from cardiovascular disease, from metabolic issues, that tend to run a little bit higher in men. Men actually are not as efficient at this, and it's one of the reasons why they have more visceral fat, and more cardiac disease as well. So just take some solace in that, although we're softer, we don't fit into jeans as well, we can't eat as much, overall our bodies are doing what they're supposed to do, which is putting fat into our blood and storing it into safe deposits where it belongs. So when we burn off, say, around six hundred calories, so a really good bout of exercise, we release more ghrelin, 33% more ghrelin than men do, and ghrelin is a hunger hormone that comes out of the stomach. So we respond more to exercise, and then it also leads to more compensation. If you put a buffet out in front of us after we've done that exercise, we'll eat more than men do, and the interesting part is even after we eat more, we still have 25% higher ghrelin, and so that's a lesson learned for women I think. Either keep the exercise a little bit more moderate, or really distract yourself after you exercise. Go watch TV or go shopping, in fact go shopping for jeans and you'll see how much you don't want to eat. Just do something, be aware that you're hungrier and you have to really control the reaction to want to fill yourself up.Sheila: Does it pass after a certain amount of time?Sylvia: I haven't seen research on it but I can tell you my experience, no, it'll be all day. My own little trick is I exercise at night, so I'll exercise between 7, even up to 10 o'clock, and I'll just go to bed. If I sleep on it, it'll disappear, I'm not as hungry the next day as I am during the day.Adam: Dr. Tara, to change the subject a little bit, because there's so much in your book that you touch on, and one of the most fascinating things about fat and how we retain fat is this biome in our stomachs. It turns out, as you say, people have different biomes in their stomach, and depending upon their bacterial content if you will, the types of bacteria that make up their biome, that will depend on whether you're obese or not, or whether you're thin or not.Sylvia: That's a really interesting field, and a quickly changing field, I feel like they're learning new things all the time. The thinking, the standard thinking was that if you have a higher proportion of [Inaudible: 00:19:59] in your gut compared to [Inaudible: 00:20:02], that those people tended to extract more calories out of food, they tended to be heavier, and it's a cycle. So what we eat also affects the bacteria that we have, so people who are eating higher fats, higher carbohydrates, they were having the type of phyla associated more with extracting calories and having a heavier body type. People who were eating more fruits and vegetables had a different phyla, they had more diversity, and so I think what they're seeing now, there's a little bit of movement away from that type of thinking of [Inaudible: 00:20:33] and more thinking about diversity in our gut. People who have higher diversities of bacteria tend to have a leaner body type, and it's all really interesting because another observation was that the bacteria we have in our gut, it tends to run in families. So they're wondering if this is how obesity is growing, because once somebody has someone's bacteria that is associated with a thicker body type, is it spreading to children, is it having something to do with childhood obesity? This is moving, so there are things we can do though. One is what I just said, when you eat more fruits and vegetables, it's tougher to digest those. So one way bacteria works is that it helps us digest foods that our normal body could not, things like polysaccharides and fibrous foods, plants. It helps turn all those starches into glucose, something we can easily absorb. It also helps with fat storage as well, so the more we're giving our microbiome a run for the money, really nice tough salads and things like that, more is passing into waste than would be getting absorbed into our gut. Also just keeping your gut healthy, I think some of these probiotics and like artichokes, bananas, legumes, also keep a nice gut lining, a healthy mucous lining, that also fosters a good diversity of bacteria. So there's a lot of diet books on this in no field alone, but it is a quickly changing field scientifically. I think the best advice we can take from it right now is just try to eat more fruits and vegetables; it's very trite advice, I'm aware of that, but part of it is that I just wanted to understand how the microbiome was working. It's viruses too that do have an effect, and I write about being able to catch fat in a way. There's some viruses associated with higher weight gain and obesity, and I write about that pretty much at length in the book, but I think it's not all bad news. We just have to work harder, so if you have a microbiome that's tilted towards gaining weight, you will have to work harder, you'll have to eat a little less, you'll have to eat more salads versus more fats and high carbohydrates. If you have the virus, I mean that's tough too, and I write about one patient who did have the virus and he gained weight excessively easily. He just has to eat less, it's harder for him, he'll eat about 1200 calories a day and he's 6'1”, he's a big guy. It's just the way it is, and I think part of what I want to do in my book is let's just face facts. Let's not pretend this is easy, let's not say it's the simple diet of 1, 2, 3, and you'll lose weight. For some of us it's just harder, and at least know why it is harder, and then there are some small tweaks you can make that will help you fight your fat in a smarter way.Tim: Dr. Terra, I've got to tell you one of the many things I enjoyed about your book is how you not only provided all of us with a very detailed science lesson regarding fat, but how you describe both the harm fat can cause, and its usefulness in the form of the patient stories, one of which you just referred to right now. So it's a great read, it's very informative, I think it's changed the four of our lives in how we look at fat and it'll do the same thing for our audience as well too. I know we're short on time but I do want to, if we can, add one more element to this. You mentioned genetics. We're all victims of our genetics, but exercise can help us fight what we've inherited negatively through our genetics.Sylvia: That's right. So for genetics, what they do find is that exercise can attenuate some of the effect of these genetics, so if you increase exercise by six times or more over resting metabolism, which is achieved by running four to six miles an hour, or cycling about twelve to sixteen miles per hour, it actually attenuates some of the effects of those genes. It's like even at some point your genes have to just give up and give in, and admit that you're using a lot of energy and it can't hold on anymore. Again, it's one of these instances where we just have to work a little bit harder, there's one gene, FTO, that actually causes a higher desire to eat energy dense foods, so things like cookies and brownies, and with kids who have this variation, when we test them, they'll actually go to a buffet and compare them to normal kids who don't have this FTO variation, they found that kids with the FTO variation, they actually will load up much more on things like chips and cookies, compared to the other kids. It affects appetite as well, so it still gets down to the things that we can do, and that includes food, it includes eating smart, eating for your hormones, exercising for your hormones. Just being a little smarter about it, don't quite think of it as calorie in, calorie out. There's certain times of the day that you can eat or not eat and it'll help you release more of that growth hormone, more of those fat busting hormones. Certain types of things that you can eat that will affect your hormones, and I'm not just talking about insulin, but growth hormone and testosterone too. So think very holistically about it. There are some treatments coming out in the future that I'm hopeful will help people lose weight. One of them is leptin injections, if that will ever get approved. So like I said, we lose leptin when we lose fat, and what they've done is actually inject leptin back into people who have lost 10% of their fat or more, and they find that their metabolism improves, and their quest to eat is not as strong anymore. So it helps them maintain the lower weight, but that's way off in the future I'm sorry to say; that's going to be another ten years, minimum, before that would ever reach consumers. There's other things too, there's injecting brown fat, brown fat is a type of fat which will actually burn calories versus white fat, which the main function is to store, and that will is also far into the future. In the meantime what we can do is just be smart, customize a diet that works for you. Really keep a log of what you eat, when, what type of food it is, and then weigh yourself every day, and you'll start to see where the correlation is. Everybody is really different, and in The Secret Life of Fat, I write about this research from Israel actually, where they've studied a large number of people and they look at their blood sugar after they eat various foods. What they noticed is that some people can eat chocolate and they can have alcohol and they don't get a blood sugar spike; other people can't, they react, and so they're storing more fat as well because the blood sugar spike leads to insulin, that will help store all of that into fat. So we're all really different, and it varies based on a lot of things that we talked about, like the genetics, microbiome, gender, etc. So some things will work for you that don't work for your neighbor and vice versa, so just be very attentive. Watch what you can eat versus can't, I know there's some things I can't believe I can get away with, everyone will tell me I'm crazy for eating this but it doesn't make me gain weight. I can have small amounts of chocolate in the middle of the day, nothing bad happens to me, thank god because I really can't live without it.Tim: You just made a lot of people mad, Dr. Tara.Mike: And happy. They'll have to troubleshoot for themselves. I have one last quick question, Sylvia. We talked about nutrition, we talked about fitness and the troubleshooting processes with regulation of your fat, to either gain or to lose. I know you mentioned in your book a little bit about cortisol and stress management, and what we know about as far as weight gain or weight loss. I know we have a lot of clients who are under stressful times in their life, and I'm not sure if the correlation is directly related to that or other things or whatever, but I've seen people gain a lot of weight or lose a lot of weight as a result of stress.Sylvia: I know there's news about cortisol, I actually think too much might be made out of cortisol. Cortisol has a link to abdominal fat, so when we're stressed out, we have more cortisol which is linked to some amounts of fat. I think more the issue is how we psychologically react to stress. So being on a diet, maintaining a good, healthy regimen, it actually takes an application of willpower, and when people have stress in their lives, like even during the recession or a bad economic time, or they lose a job or are going through a divorce, they are less able to stay with something else that requires stress. It's like all the stress is being focused on this one event, and they can't absorb more. So in a way, our willpower is like a muscle and it can be depleted. In fact, in the recession that we had more recently around 2008, candy sales soared. So people didn't feel like being on a diet, they just want to indulge, they're stressed out, so I think psychological factors are more of it than even cortisol. Those are things that are important to note because we never get rid of stress in our lives, I mean I get stressed out just sitting in traffic. There's stress all around us, so one thing is if you're going through a really stressful time, it's not a great time to start a diet honestly. You'll just feel like a failure if you do try because it gets hard. So choose a diet at the right time and then manage to stay on it. Two important things to know when you're staying on a diet and really giving a good effort is that you actually need to reward yourself. Our willpower gets depleted at times, and they find that hospital workers who are told to wash their hands all day, towards the end of the day, they'll just stop. They just don't feel like doing it, but if they give them longer breaks between their shifts, they'll continue to wash their hands during the day. So there's something around being depleted, feeling like you've had enough of a break in between that you can stay on a regimen. So give yourself a break either by going off your diet every once in a while, or going off and doing something fun, but make sure that you're entering in some happiness. Another study I talk about is people who have a hand exerciser for a long time, a hand gripper, and they divide them into two: they have one watch a sad movie for a while and then another group watch a happy movie, and then they give them the hand exerciser back, the hand gripper back. They find the people who watched the happy movie can stick with that hand gripper a long time, so scientifically, you actually need to recharge, you need to come off and have some fun. The important thing is to get right back on, and this is where dichotomous thinking can come on. So people sometimes when they go off a diet, they go down this slippery slope where they can't get back on. Like I've had ice cream, I've completely failed, and now I'm just going to go off, it doesn't matter. That's called dichotomous thinking, and people who have that problem are actually more prone to depression, they're more prone to eating disorders, so it's a really bad thing to have, and women have it much more than men do. I've read about that in studies —Adam: Add that to the list.Sylvia: So the self love element is really important, and it's funny, I write it about in the book. There's one researcher from Mayo who said that women get something out of food that men don't; when men come off their diet, they're like yeah I had a beer, so what? I'm going to get back on and women are going to be like I had all these problems and I gave up, and I feel really badly now. The successful weight coaches or weight loss coaches, they're very good at coaching people back on. So if you can do that for yourself, you'll have so much more success than if you just beat yourself up every time you come off. You're going to have come off, you can't stay on, you need to recharge yourself, and then be forgiving. You came off, but you had 30 great days ahead of that, so now you're just going to have another 30 great days going forward. So tons of advice in the book, and as you can see from all my talking, there's a lot of research in it, a lot of points to know.Tim: The book is The Secret Life of Fat, it brings together cutting edge research with historical perspectives to reveal fat's true identity, and this episode, like you just said, we've just scratched the surface of all of the valuable information contained in this book, which is available Walmart, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Audible, and other locations as well. Dr. Sylvia Tara, thanks so much for joining us here at the InForm Fitness Podcast. We certainly wish you the best of luck with your book, and really appreciate you being with us, thank you.Sylvia: Great, thank you so much. It was great to be here.Tim: We'll include links in the show notes to Dr. Sylvia Tara's book, The Secret Life of Fat. Just scroll down past the description in your podcast app, and you'll find links to purchase the hard copy of her book in Amazon, or if you're like me and you like to listen to your books, we'll have a link to the book in Audible. You'll also find the link to pick up Adam's book, Power of Ten: The Once a Week, Slow Motion Fitness Revolution. Included in Adam's book are several exercises that support this protocol that you can actually perform on your own if you don't happen to live near an InForm Fitness location. For those that do live in Manhattan, Port Washington, Denville, Burbank, Boulder, Leesburg, and Reston, good news, there's an InForm Fitness to you. Pop on over to informfitness.com to get a glimpse of each location. Better yet, set up a consultation to begin your own journey with the Power of Ten. Be sure to join us next week, because Adam has a confession he would like to make to all of us who are a part of InForm Nation. I'll tell you this much, it's something that he's been struggling with most of his life, and something that a lot of us might have in common with him. To guarantee that you don't accidentally miss an upcoming episode of the InForm Fitness Podcast, just subscribe, it's very simple. Hit the subscribe button and every single Monday morning, we'll have a new episode waiting for you. For Sheila Melody, Mike Rogers, and Adam Zickerman of InForm Fitness, I'm Tim Edwards, with the InBound Podcasting network. 

  Interview w/ Timothy Ballard Mark Mabry January 11, 2016 Final Transcript   Intro: You are listening to Slave Stealer. Tim: Welcome to Slave Stealer podcast, where we take you into the dark world of trafficking so you can help us find the solution. We are talking here with co-host, Mark Mabry. Mark: That’s me. And we did a little change in format. This is part two of our ‘Meet Tim’ series, because he has had a really interesting story. And what I found amazing in getting to know Tim over the last few years, is that sacrifice of peace of mind, sacrifice of kind of this level of innocence that 99.9% of the rest of us enjoy. And, to recap, we talked about Tim’s story a little bit, how he got into child crimes, and how he was invited by HSI to be on that team, and then we talked about his family. He has got young kids, and his son is now 15. And, the birds and the bees talk is awkward enough. What about that talk about what dad does for a living?” Tim: Well, you know, yeah..Let me say this first: I was scared to death some 15 years ago when I was asked to enter this dark world of child crimes. And the thing that scared me the most was the fact that I had kids, and I didn’t know how that would affect me. Would I see an image that reminded me of my kids, would that make me a paranoid father, would that turn me... My wife was scared to death that I would turn into just some cynical, just bitter old dude. And I was scared to death. I mean, you’ve got to wade through the sewer to find the crap. Mark: And what if the pornography took, I mean, worst case scenario, you turn into somebody that is actually into it? Not that that would happen with you knowing you, but... Tim: You know, what I have found that’s..a lot of people think that, and they go there, but... Mark: Those people are stupid. Tim: The people who had that suggestion are really idiotic. No, but it’s a logical conclusion. But what I have found is, frankly, kind of the opposite. Because when you are exposed to children - unless you are a pedophile, right - when you are exposed to that, it makes you want to distance yourself even more from all things pornography. At least that was my experience, and as I watched other agents who I have worked with, who have to be exposed to this. It turns you off so much to the whole industry, even the legal part of it, because it’s so, frankly, similar that it actually, at least for me, it has had the effect of major deterrent, even from any temptation my own part to even look at regular pornography. Does that make sense? Mark: Yeah! Tim: And, for the child stuff, it is just a punch in the stomach every time, and it is worse and worse every time. And you learn how to cope, you learn how to be able to see this stuff and still move on. But, like in the last show, I was talking about how the first thing I want to do when I saw particular images or videos, is just grab my kids and bring them to the safest place I know, which is my home, and just hold them. And so the whole concept, the whole idea to your question of how I bring together these two worlds, of what I do outside versus what I do inside - you have to factor in all these things. But my kids do start asking questions. I was addressing a group that was doing a benefit for Operation Underground Railroad just two nights ago. And they had the kids there and they wanted me to talk about it, and it was so hard, because I’m sitting there, and they say, “Tell us what you do!”, and I’m going, “All right, well I’ll start...”       Mark: How old were the kids? Tim: Oh, the kids were as young as five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Mark: Oh, geez.. Tim: It was like all these neighborhood kids. And their parents wanted them to know that there are kids who are less fortunate and that we need to help them. That was the idea. So, I thought to myself, “I’ll start with the software that we are building.” The software is called ‘Stars’. It’s a pretty name. Until one of the kids says, “What does STARS stand for?” And it stands for Sex Traveler Apprehension Retention System, right? So, I say SEEEE ugh...I can’t say it, I can’t even say the name of the software! Mark: Super Terrific Apprehension... Tim: Yes! So, I couldn’t, and it was so..it’s so difficult. A little kid raises his hand after I’m talking about slavery in general terms, and he said, “Why would someone want to steal a child? Wouldn’t they rather steal an adult because they’d be better at being a slave and a stronger worker?” I just looked at this little kid, I was like, “I know exactly the truth of your question, I know how to answer that, but I cannot answer that.” And so these issues that I was grappling with at this charity event, are the same issues I grapple with every day with my kids. When they see something on the news, and with my small children I just tell them, you know, I help kids, we help kids, we help kids who’ve been kidnapped. That’s all they know, and they seem ok with that. But as they get older, they start asking questions. And it intersects at the same time that I need to start talking to them about the birds and the bees. My wife and I are very open, I mean, I think my job has made me the most desensitized to all things sex, like I can say anything to anyone, because the conversations that I have had with people, with perpetrators especially during interrogations, where we were talking about things, or undercover, where they’re selling me kids. There is nothing that makes me blush, right. So, I can just take my kids and sit down, and say, “Hey”, talk about everything, embarrassing things, everything from pornography to masturbation to dating and all this stuff. It is rare that we talk about that, somehow it leads to the fact that - again these are my more adolescent, teenage kids - it always leads to some kind of an explanation that they are asking me for about, “Why would an adult want to do that to a child?”      Mark: When they say THAT, what ..I mean.. Tim: I mean they kind of..they know, I mean, they figured it out. Mark: Yeah. Tim: They do, because they know what is what we’re talking about. And so, I think, in the world of child pornography and sexual abuse of children, you don’t want to be graphic with the kids at all, even with my teenage kids. I kind of let them just figure it out and let their brain stop them where they should be stopped, because the brain will do that. Mark: Oh, adults don’t even grasp it. Tim: Adults don’t grasp it. I was sitting with my father-in-law - a brilliant man, PhD - we were in his kitchen, this was when I was an agent, and I heard him, he started talking.. What had happened was that I arrested one of his friends - not like a close friend, right, but... Mark: ”So, what did you do today, Tim?” “Well, I busted Larry.” Tim: Right! Mark: I have heard this story. Tim: He knew this guy, he had been to his home. So he knew this guy, and he started saying, “You know...I kind of feel bad for this particular individual, because it’s not really their fault. I mean, these girls dress in a certain way that is provocative, and it is not totally their fault.” And, I’m just dying. I’m like, “Wait, wait, wait, what?! You are telling me that a 5-year old puts on clothes, and now it’s not the pedophile’s fault that they look at the 5-year-old!” And his eyes almost popped out of his head! He says, “Five years old?! Why are you talking about 5-year-olds?!”     Mark: He’s thinking the 17 ½-year-old. Tim: He’s thinking 17, 16 years old, where you can’t really maybe tell the difference between a 17- and an 18-year-old, right. His eyes popped out of his head, and he says, “What?!” I said, “Yeah...Dad, you don’t know this, but what George was looking at was 5- to 7-year-old children, boys and girls, being raped, ok?” Mark: They sent a picture in the tub. Tim: Exactly. Being raped by adults. And he just kind of put his head down, shook it, and he said, “Now, that is weird..” I remember he said, ”That is just weird...”, and he walked out of the kitchen. He couldn’t handle it, and I don’t blame him. Our minds don’t even let us go there. And this is the problem. This is the problem that, frankly, is the obstacle to the solution. And the problem is we don’t want to see, we don’t want to believe it. I remember in the very beginning, in the early 2000s, when we were taking cases, child porn cases, to the judges, federal judges and state judges on pornography cases, on child pornography cases. And they were sentencing them to the most minimal sentences. Like this one guy had this collection that was unbelievable, categorized it by the names - he would name the kids in the videos, and create little files for them. It was unbelievable. He had hundreds of thousands of videos, images and everything else. And when the judge sentenced him, he sentenced him to four or five months in jail, but weekends only.            Mark: What?! Tim: And, I thought, “What is going on?!” The prosecutor I was working with, she said, “You know, the problem, Tim, is they don’t get it.The judges don’t get it!” They don’t get it. And we asked the judges if we could please show..during the sentencing they brought me in, and said, “Agent Ballard wants to show you the images.” He said, “I don’t want to see that junk! I don’t want to see that junk.” He’s embarrassed to even look at it. The human side of him doesn't want to even watch him looking at it, so he says, “I don’t need to see, I don’t need to see it!” So, we didn’t show it to him, and then that sentence came out. I guarantee you, I guarantee you that he doesn’t want to accept it. You know, the reports indicated that the kids were as young as five or four years old. His brain - my theory - wouldn’t let him grasp it, wouldn’t let him grasp it. And so he just gave him this super light sentence. But if I would have just opened that laptop, and say, “You have to watch this, you need to see this.” Now, I’m not advocating for showing child porn to people.    Mark: Exactly. Tim: At all! At all! Mark: But, maybe we emphasize, highly illegal: if you download this, even for altruistic, I’m-going-to-expose-myself, but...   Tim: You will go to jail. Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Mark: Yes! Tim: But what I’m telling you is, be aware that it is there, and we have got to talk about it. It hurts...You mentioned that when you talk about this, and this is why people don’t want to talk about it, you hit the nail in the head: you lose part of your own innocence. Mark: Absolutely. Tim: And every time you talk about it, some more of your innocence, even as adults, it goes away. You have to sacrifice that, but you sacrifice it for the kids. Because if we don’t sacrifice a part of our innocence to know this is happening, they have no hope, because we are the adults, we are the ones who will...if anyone’s going to save them, it is going to be the adults, that have the power and the influence and the ability. But if we don’t know about it, we are not going to save them. But to know about it, you must sacrifice some of your innocence. And so that’s what we ask people to do: sacrifice some of your innocence, listen to this show, go to our website, learn about trafficking. It’s the fastest growing criminal enterprise on earth. Two million children, and more, are being sold for sex, over ten million children sold for labor. Add all the adults, we’re on a 30-40 million range. I mean, wake up! Help them out! But it does require a sacrifice of innocence.     Mark: So, back to the question at hand, did you actually have, have you had a sit-down, “Ok, let me talk to you about this, son”? Like, let me ask it this way: have your kids seen the documentary? Tim: Here’s my policy and my wife’s, I mean, every kid is an individual, right. Every kid you treat differently, because it is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution to raising kids. Mark: You have how many? Tim: I have six kids. Mark: That’s awesome! Tim: So, our kind of general policy, guideline on the documentary, which is ‘The Abolitionists’ documentary, which films my team going into different countries and helping the police infiltrate trafficking rings and so forth... Mark: Catching you soliciting pimps for underaged girls. Tim: Right. Mark: Asking “Hey, will she do this, will she do that?” Tim: Oh, yeah. Mark: Your kids have to hear you saying that. Tim: My kids are hearing that, yeah. So, what we’ve decided is, generally speaking, if this particular video or this particular documentary includes children, who are being sold, who are, say, 12 years old, then I’m going to let my 12-year-old watch it. And that is because I think it’s important for him to see what he has and what someone else doesn’t have. “Someone your age is being trafficked. You get to play football; they are being sold for sex.” And, I think it’s important for kids to recognize what they have, and then it instills in them a sense of responsibility: “How can I help that kid, who doesn’t get to play football? What can I do?” And it makes them aware of the world and aware of what’s happening. So, that is kind of how we deal with it. And then again I let them watch it, I don’t rehash it with them, I don’t bring it up too much, at least graphically.           Mark: Yeah. Tim: I let their mind stop them where it needs to stop. Mark: Smart. I like that principle that you said with adults, with kids, with everyone - they will go to a point that they are ready to go to.   Tim: Right. But here’s the point that I was making too - once you are an adult and you have real influence to help, it changes a bit in my mind, right.     Mark: Especially if you are a judge. Tim: Especially if you are a judge. I don’t want it to stop where your mind wants it to stop. And this is our job at Slave Stealer podcast and other places, other people’s responsibility, who are in the know-how, who have seen it, you’ve got to say “No!” No, I’m not going to let you stop. I am not going to let you shake your head and walk out of the kitchen. I’m going to make you stay until your mind grasps this enough to where you are going to act. And that’s the problem, is people hit that point where their brain wants them to stop, and they shake their head and walk away. We can’t have that. If we do that, these kids will not be liberated.        Mark: If that happens in 1860, you have still got millions of slaves in the South. Tim: Absolutely! Mark: Because we have talked about it. Tim: Absolutely. That’s why, because people shook their head and walked out of the kitchen. Mark: Yeah. You have got to show it to them. There are so many questions - I’m trying to think of a logical order here. You talked about it with your father-in-law, and we are not talking about 17 ½-year-old girls.    Tim: Right. Mark: We are talking about kids that are groomed, And, maybe.. let’s define the term. We kind of need to have like a trafficking glossary on our site. But grooming, and, maybe in the case of Lady, that we talked about - that’s when you explained it to me, you know, when I was going to go be a scoutmaster. I had to go through the whole ‘how to identify a perv’, right, and one of the terms they used was grooming. And they’re like, “Well, when you prepare a child for…” whatever. But you really broke it down for me in the case of this 11-year old virgin, who was sold to you in Columbia. I was there watching, she was a virgin. Tim: Right Mark: However, she knew exactly what was going to go down. Tim: Right.. Mark: What do they do to groom a child and how were you made aware of it? Like, give me how you came to that knowledge. Because this episode is kind of about you and the topic. Tim: So I came to the knowledge the only way I think anyone can, and that is experiencing it firsthand. For me, that was going undercover, pretending to be someone, who is interested in that black market, and getting into that market, becoming a player in that market. So, in the case of this little girl, who they were calling ‘Lady’ - and that surely wasn’t her real name, it was a name the traffickers gave her - in that case, we were pretending to be solicitors of child sex. We were working with the Colombian police pretending to be Americans, who travel to Colombia to engage in sex with children. And what had happened in this case, because we were working in that capacity and because we presented ourselves as wealthy Americans, I hinted to the trafficker that we would be interested in sharing profits and investing in his trafficking business. The reason we did that was because that all of a sudden, if they believe us, that pushes them to open their books and open their business and explain the business plan. And that’s how we learn how they do this. I would say things like, ”Look, I could probably get you a million dollar investment in this, but I need to know how it works; I need to know how you get these kids; I want to know you maintain the kids, how you groom and prepare them,” and so on and so forth. And the guy was more than happy to tell me what he does. Mark: I have a photograph of your hands around this little pattern napkin. It was like a napkin business plan...     Tim: Sure, yeah. Mark: Of a sex hotel for kids. Tim: That’s right. Mark: I have a picture of that. I’ll post it, because it is so disturbing when you realize what those numbers represent, volume and quantity and velocity of children and child rape.    Tim: Yeah, it was the dirtiest, most evil business plan that anyone could ever dream up. Mark: Yeah. Tim: ..on that napkin. That’s right. Mark: I’ll post that. Tim: And that was like our third or fourth discussion about how their business operations work. So, what they explained to me was, “Look, it’s easy to get the kids. You find poor families.” You don’t want to do a hard kidnapping, you know like the movie ‘Taken’. Does that happen? Yes. Is that the likely scenario? No. Why? Because you kidnap a kid, a hard kidnapping - meaning go into their house, like what happened with Elizabeth Smart, go into the house, pull them out. Well, you are going to kick up a lot of dust around you. Why do that if you are a trafficker if you can instead make it a peaceful kidnapping. Not peaceful for the child, right.          Mark: Yeah. Tim: Hell for the child, peaceful for the trafficker. In other words, they can kind of do this without fearing much consequence. So, what they do is they go to poor families, and these guys had actually hired or were working with, contracting with, a beauty queen in Cartagena. She had won a pageant, a beauty pageant. So, kind of people knew who she was; she had been on the news, she showed up in music videos, and so people knew who she was. So, they walk into the house with this beauty queen, and they say, “Look, look at this beautiful woman. She doesn’t have a worry in the world. She is paid, she is wealthy, she is beautiful, she is famous.” And then they point to the 9-year old daughter, and say, “we focus” - they told us “9 years old is where we start”. And they say to the mother and father: “Your 9-year-old daughter is just as beautiful as this girl; we just got to train her. We can train her, and she can become a model and an actress.” And they fill the parents with all sorts of dreams that they never believed were possible for their child. And certainly this is legitimate, because they are looking at the star, who is in their living room saying, “I can do this for you. And we’re going to give you a scholarship. You can come to our school and learn how to be a model for free.” At that point, they bring them into the modeling school, and they teach them some things. And when they get comfortable, they say, “Now you are going to watch this video.” And the video will be pornography. “This is part of being an actress, it’s part of…you need to understand this world.” And when kids are at that age - nine, ten, eleven - their minds are still developing and forming, and if someone tells you this is right, this is right, this is right, eventually your mind develops as a 9- or 10-year old into believing, “Ok, this is right, this is right.” And so they start seeing that. We had evidence that some of them were being drugged, you know, threatened: “If you go back and tell your parents that we are doing these things, you are going to be in big trouble.” And again, kids are very… Elizabeth Smart, when we get her on the show, she can talk about this, where a police officer walked up to her, while she was in captivity, and said “Are you Elizabeth Smart?”. I mean that, it would have been over! Mark: Yeah. Tim: And she said, “I am not. I am not Elizabeth Smart.” Because she was scared to death because they, her captors, had told her, “If you ever reveal who you are, we will kill your sister, and your family.” And as Elizabeth tells it, everything they had told her they are going to do to her, they did it. They told her they are going to rape her, and they did it. They told her they are doing this particular thing - sex acts - and they did it. They told her they’d chain her up, and they did it. So, when they told her that they are going to kill her parents if she reveals who she is, why would a 14-year-old not believe that they are going to do it?                        Mark: They’ve got all power. Tim: All power. And she has received criticism for that, you know, like, “Why didn’t you run away? Did you want to be there?”, you know... People just can’t comprehend how the mind of a child works. And that’s what these kids go through - they are scared into not revealing what is really going on. So, they groom them, and they said it, it will be a year and a half, or more, while they are grooming them, all under the hospices of this modeling school. And of course they are being trained to be models as well, and then eventually they say, “Ok, so this is your test. You are going to this party on this island, and these men are going to come from America, and you are going to do the things that you have seen being done in the pornography videos, and do whatever they want.” In a nutshell, that is how it works. I mean, that is how it works, that is the reality. Mark: And variations of. Tim: And variations of that.   Mark: So, they can do everything up until the point that she is not a virgin to claim... Tim: Right. Mark: “Hey, it is a virgin.” Tim: And they can, and they want to do this because their virgins are premium, right.  Already, a child, in most black markets, a child will go for about a double or more than double of what an adult prostitute will go for. But then, if that child is also a virgin, then it’s quadruple, or more of that price. So, it’s a premium to sell a virgin child. Mark: Wow...Give me, you’ve talked about it - like pulling people’s blinders off, and those moments where people are opened up, and the one with I think your father-in-law, who gets it now - that was pretty dramatic. What about..give me another one. You don’t have to name names, I just like hearing about people’s response. Are there any high profiles that you are allowed to share, that, maybe change the name, change the whatever? Somebody that you have shocked, that should have known?        Tim: Yeah. I was in the office, probably a year or two ago, of a governor of a certain state. We were explaining who we were and what we did, and he was absolutely shocked. And, kudos to him for being honest, saying, “Wait, wait, wait, what?! There is how many kids? There is how many kids being hurt and trafficked in the world? And what does that mean? They do what?!” He didn’t know, he didn’t know anything! And again, I’m not blaming him for not knowing. It is not something you go seek out, right? It is not something that your advisors seek out to tell you. It is hard to talk about. And I don’t know that you know the answer - why aren’t we talking about it more? Why, why, why, why? I really believe because it is that.. it is so dark a topic. It is not even...you know, slavery in the nineteenth century - it was politically divisive. It was a political nightmare to get involved: go back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates and everything. I mean, it was a divisive and a political issue. This is not even a political issue. There is nobody standing on the side of the pedophiles - well there are some: NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, which deserves its own show someday.         Mark: Do they have a logo? Tim: Well, there are all sorts of different..Look them up: nambla.org. Mark: Is that weird? Tim: You might have cops knocking on your door tonight. Mark: That is what I am saying. Tim: No, no, no, you won’t. You can look them up. Mark: What are the pop-up ads I am getting after that? Tim: Yeah, be careful when you go: nambla.org. I mean, it is a legitimate organization, legitimate in terms of legality, right. And, they are just a group that is pushing for a.. Mark: Oh hell! Tim: What did you find? You got...I told you to be careful when you go to that... Mark: No, it is not...and luckily, I’ve retained that innocence: I have never seen child pornography. It is a cartoon on the front their page - it is an adult asking a little boy, “What can I do to make you happy?” And the little boy says, “I like hugs.” Tim: Boom! And that’s their whole message. If you go into...When I was an agent, I would go all into it and learn about it, what they believe in. And they actually talk about how kids, psychologically and emotionally, need sexual healing and sexual exposure from adults. And why not adults, who know what they are doing? And so they make it sound as though the kid wants to be hugged, the kid wants to be touched. Why is it so bad? And they bring up science, where they show that children are sexual beings based on this story and that. Of course, they are human beings! Their sexuality is attached to everybody; we are born with it. But that doesn’t mean you are ready to bring it out and force it on a child, because that’s what you would be really doing, forcing it on a child. Their brains aren’t developed to the point where they can make those kind of decisions, or comprehend the kind of consequences of that activity. I mean it destroys...I’ve seen kids destroyed over this. And here they are saying they just want to hug, “Just hug me, that is all I want.”      Mark: Oh, here’s the other one, right. They are just headlines and we’re not going to go off on NAMBLA forever, because it does deserve its own show. Maybe we bring one of these idiots in.   Tim: Yeah, bring them in, let them take it. Mark: Or, we bring in some of the people they are attacking. And I thought of this this morning, ok. I’ll read a couple headlines: ‘When Labor Loved Liberty (And Before They Changed Their Minds)’ about the labor unions formally supporting..whatever. ‘Remembering Michael Jackson’, and they’ve got the old black version of Michael, ‘Remembering a Lover of Boys’, ‘Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons’, ‘The Non-Wisdom of Crowds: Defender of Anonymous Outraged by our Lack of Passivity’. Now, this one’s interesting: ‘Hipster Vigilantism and the New Populist Attack on Free Speech’. That is what they are calling it: speech, right. And then, they say ‘Anonymous Decidedly Illiberal Campaign to Silence Us’. Dude, is Anonymous getting on these guys, because they would be an awesome ally.   Tim: I don’t know, but let’s check, let’s look into it - let’s absolutely look into it. But these guys have conventions; it’s a political movement to legalize this kind of behavior. Mark: They called Oprah a liar, by the way. Tim: And so... Mark: Saying she wasn’t, she wasn’t molested as a child. Ok, I’m off on NAMBLA. Tim: Ok. So, we’ll go back talking more about that, but the point is, that, except for these few total whackjobs, who think that this is a healthy thing for children, it is really just obviously serving their own selfish lust and pleasure and evil. Dark, dark souls...But, for the most part, this is not a political issue, right, it is not a political issue. Everyone will be on the side of solving this. So, what is the obstruction? It is simply, “I don’t want to know; I don’t want to see it.” It’s the ostrich, the ostrich effect, sticking our head in the sand: “I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to...I have kids, grandkids. I can’t think about it.” And that’s where we have to make the change, that’s where we have to convert people to look at it.    Mark: What are the more offensive things that people have said to you? Maybe on purpose or not on purpose. I don’t need the top three, because it’s hard to think in superlatives, but give me five offensive things people have said to Tim Ballard, unknowingly or knowingly.   Tim: Offensive, in terms of just this topic in general? Mark: Yeah, that you’re like, “I used to respect you three minutes ago, before that came out your mouth.” Tim:I think the one time I can remember where I got the most offended...and frankly, you actually just did it to me earlier today, accidentally. I wasn’t so mad. Mark: Oh, when I wondered if you would turn into a perv by looking at... Tim: Yeah, it was so...I felt really bad because... Mark: That wasn’t a personal attack, by the way. Tim: No, no no, it wasn’t. And I want to clear this up. I don’t have a whole lot of examples of people, who say things offensive in terms of why this should or shouldn’t be legal or illegal, right. I mean, I’ve had perpetrators during interrogations defended, you know. A guy named Ernst Luposchainsky, for example - you can look him up, we arrested him in Minnesota... And he was pretty, I mean he was offensive, but I mean, geez, he was just such a joke. You are looking at this guy and you are almost, almost...somewhere in between laughter and vomit. You know, you are just like: “Are you serious? You are saying this?” You know, but he would talk about like the benefits of child pornography and how it helps the poor kids. “These kids get paid, they get paid for their sexual services, and we are helping them, we are helping their families.” He would talk about the tiger and the meat analogy. I remember we talked about, and this is all during his interrogation, where he would say, “Look, you have got to feed the tiger meat. If you don’t feed the tiger meat, he will eventually attack human beings.” So, he is actually saying, “Children are being raped, that’s horrible! Now, a consensual sex with a child, that is a different story. But, children are being raped against their will, I’m against that. Oh, I’m so against that!” You know, he would say...       Mark: Just for the record, you were quoting him on the “consensual sex is a different story”? Tim: Yes. Mark: Ok, just making sure it wasn’t like... Tim: Yes, quoting. Mark: You, parenthetically saying “Hey, consensual sex...” Tim: I’m sure some out there would love to misquote me on that and accuse me. So, the tiger and the meat, right. “You have got to feed the tiger meat, you have got to feed the tiger meat, and then he will never rape the kids.” And the meat is child porngraphy. “Make it legal. Let them look at it, because then they will just look at it, and then they will get satisfied and the kids will be safe.” Mark: Oh, yeah, totally! Tim: Because it doesn’t, it certainly doesn’t fuel your evil passion by looking at it, right? Like for example, a man who watches pornography, he never watches pornography with an int to actually engage in sex with a woman. He just watches it for, you know, for the pleasure in itself. Yeah...baloney! Any dude, who watched porn will tell you, right, “I would like to translate this to my bedroom,” right. It is no different with child pornographers. They are looking at this, and they want to act out. So it is just the opposite - you are fueling the fire, not putting it out. But, I mean, that was offensive. And, by the way, that Ernst Lupochainsky case, we got to do a show sometime on that. That was the hardest case I have ever did. In the middle of that interview, ok, while he was telling me all this stuff, he would not break, he would not break, he would not break. So, what I had to do...because he believed that all men were closet pedophiles, he just believed that story... Mark: I love this story. Tim: He just believed that. It was his way to justify his own feelings, of course. But this puritanical society - that is what he called it - has stopped the natural flow of love between a man and young, little girls. But on this show, I have got to read...he had this postmortem message he put on all his child porn collection. We will prep and I will read his message.      Mark: Oh my gosh. Tim: It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable. But the point I am making here is, I had to go undercover - this is just a teaser - I had to go undercover... Mark: Don’t blow it, because I know the punchline, and it is unreal. Tim: Yeah..as myself. So, I pushed my buddy away, the other agent, who was interviewing the guy. I was still wired up undercover, you know, and I said, “Hey, listen man, listen Ernst, help me out. I mean you are right. Reading your stuff - it makes me trust you. I have got to look at this stuff all day long. What do you think that does to me? It makes me want that. But there is no one I can talk to. Can you talk to me? Can you help me?” Sure enough, his eyes just light up. He believed it! I couldn’t believe he bought into it. I was...I was...It is one thing when I am Brian Black, you know, or I’m some alias in an undercover operative.          Mark: That is a cute name. Did you make that one up? Tim: That was the name that I used to use, yeah...Brian Black. So, here I was, Tim Ballard, U.S. agent/pedophile. So it was a totally different thing. I was myself, and that went on for...and then you know, I reported it to my supervisors; they loved it. And that kept on for at least a month, until we could get all the information out of this guy we possibly could about his contacts and networks. And he opened up to me, thinking he was helping me enter into, you know, induct me into the beautiful world of pedophilia. So, someday we’ll do that story, because that is an amazing story. The guy is still in jail.     Mark: Good. Tim: So, that is kind of somewhat offensive, but the time I blew up...the sweetest lady on earth - she was, she was just...Lived down the street, sweet kind lady, and I was working in child porn cases, kind of mad - you know you’re just mad a lot, thinking about it. And she said to me, “So, how many agents, you know, end up…?” And again, the same thing you just said, but I didn’t blow up at you.    Mark: Good grief! I feel like such a schmuck, especially in context of the story you have just told me. Tim: Yeah, it was the first time... Mark: Because I know you are not susceptible to that. Tim: Right. And, I would honestly argue that unless you are predisposed and you enter the child crimes group so that you could access it, I think it is just the opposite. And, you know, she said, “So, how many end up pedophiles themselves, being exposed to this?” Mark: Legit question! Tim: Yeah...I mean it sounds like a legit question, unless when you are in it, you are like “Wait, whoa, whoa.” Yeah so, by the hundredth time I am watching a child scream in pain, by that time I am like, “I am digging this.” But, I went off, I went crazy. I said, “Do you think it is that?! Or maybe it is, ‘I can’t believe I have to watch this again! I can’t believe I have to subject myself again to this video, and my stomach is punched again and again and again.” It was so bothersome to me, because it is just the opposite of what she was saying. It is like, I have got to endure this. It is like saying this, here is a good analogy: someone who has been doing chemotherapy for a year, right, and every three months they got to go get another dose of chemo. It is like someone saying, “So, how many cancer patients become addicted to chemo? Even after the cancer is done, they still take chemo just because they are addicted to it?” Right?! That is analogous right there. Mark: Yeah... Tim: Ok? And, it is just like, “Wow, wow,” you know, it killed me. I get it, but it was just, it is...What they don’t understand is the potency of this. It is not! What they think is, she was probably still thinking 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds. I was like, are you kidding me?! It is not what we are talking about! If there is a 16-year old in a child porn video, we wouldn’t even prosecute that, unless you absolutely knew it was a 16-year-old, in like specific cases where, you know, uncles taking pictures or something. Mark:Yeah. Tim: But otherwise, you wouldn’t. You would be like “Eh...” If you can’t tell...The majority of the child porn cases we prosecuted: 5 years old, 7 years old, 10 years old, that range, right. I know, it’s just... it is just things the vast majority don’t have to see, and I don’t want them to see it. Mark: Yeah. Tim: I don’t want them to see it. But they need to know it is happening, so that they can be part of the solution. Mark: On that same thought of things that people unintentionally say that are offensive, how about this? And I have got this one before, even with my little bit of involvement: “Well, she looks like she wants it.” Tim: Oh, yeah...I get that quite a bit. In fact, right in our documentary, in “The Abolitionists”. Mark: Yeah! Tim: I have heard a couple of people say that. In an early screening that happened, and my wife who was in the room,  it was a very early screening, we brought some kind of influential people in to watch. Mark: I was there! Tim: Oh, right! You were there. That’s right! Mark: I was sitting by your wife. Tim: You were there. A sweet lady - I think you know her, I think you know who she is - totally innocent, you know, she just...she said, “Can’t you show like a little darker side to this, so that people know? Can’t you show us some kids who are not looking like they want to be here?” And, if you remember my wife, she’s like... Mark: Oh yeah. Tim: “Alright! This is tragic, what is happening to these kids! This isn’t a scripted film, this isn’t - we can’t make this up. This is real, and it is their hell. And just because you can’t see it, because you are not the spirit inside of that body,”... know, my wife just… bless her heart, she went crazy.   Mark: She is not outspoken. Tim: No. Mark: Right? For her to... Tim: For her to do that... it touched a nerve. Mark: Yeah.. Tim: And again, back to the misconceptions. Are you going to find cases of kids chained up and locked in closets? Absolutely, you are going to find that! The vast majority, the vast majority? No, that is not what it looks like. And in the documentary - most people get it, it is not usually a big problem - but in the documentary, I mean, you are watching the filmmakers put the ages of the kids - of course cover their identities - but they put their ages, their numbers like over their blurred faces. And so you are watching this 12-year old-girl, it says twelve, you know, and I remember that little girl, I remember that she actually had fear in her eyes. But if you weren’t looking straight into her eyes, she did walk into the party, and she knew what was going to happen to her.   Mark: And she was dressed like a 21-year-old prostitute. Maybe not her, but some of the others. Tim: Some of them were, that one wasn’t, but some of them absolutely... This little girl was wearing like long basketball shorts and a white t-shirt, and you will see that in the documentary. But others were, the 12-year-olds...    Mark: They are not picking their outfit here. Tim: Right, right. Mark: For the most part. Tim: And they are walking in and people say, “Looks like they want to do that! They want to do it! Look at, they... No one is forcing them to walk in.” And again back to Elizabeth Smart. When you will bring her on the show, we can talk to her about it, and she...If you thought Catherine, my wife, got passionate, wait until Elizabeth answers that question. And she says, because they bring it u, she had plenty of opportunities, in theory, to run. She did. She was in public areas, policeman came up to her, right, but what they don’t understand is trafficking, slavery, so much of slavery is mental. These traffickers enslave these kids mentally, emotionally, not just physically. In fact, they don’t want it; if they can get away with not enslaving them physically, all the better. Remember, they don’t want to kick up a lot of dust around them. So, if they can figure out how to enslave them mentally and emotionally, that is always the first choice, and they do it by the grooming process that we described earlier. They groom them, and then they control them. They control them! And this is why the rehab part is so important, because you have got to undo the damage, and that doesn’t happen overnight. It is a long process. I don’t know, I mean, I have talked to a lot of victims of trafficking, who are adults now and have families of their own, and they have told me, “You know, you don’t ever fully, fully heal.” I mean, there is always something there you have got to battle. And that is what happens, that is why when Elizabeth’s father runs to her, she still denies who she is for a second, and then she opens up. Because it is like a spell, and if you haven’t been through it - and I haven’t, so I can’t fully comprehend it, but I’ve been around it enough to know that you can’t comprehend it, unless it has happened to you. And a child’s mind is not like an adult’s mind. Children don’t think like adults think. Their minds are at different levels of development, they don’t have a lot of experience, they don’t understand the consequences like adults can and do. And so, it is not so difficult for the traffickers to play those mind games, warp them, brainwash them, and make them slaves.      Mark: Well, I think that...we’ll get into, I think, in shows down the road, we’ll have Throwback Thursdays. We’ll go revisit missions and do things, but I feel like that can give our listeners a little bit of insight into your passion, your feeling for what it is you do and how it affects your life. It is not a job you leave at the door, as you are hearing. And so if you have any parting shots along the lines of ‘Here’s Tim’, ‘Get to know Tim’, let’s go and leave our listeners with that.    Tim: You know I...I’d say this that I understand completely. We are talking about awareness, we are talking about people’s ability to see this problem. And I can’t sit back and judge and say, “Come on, open your eyes, open your eyes!” I was the worst of everybody; it was right before me and I was denying. I was denying it. I didn’t want to do it. It took me a long time to say yes, and even after I said yes, I was very apprehensive about how far I would go in this. So, I get it. It is a hard barrier to get around. And even when it is in front of you almost...you know, and then, when it is not in front you, of course, it is sometimes near impossible to get around. So, I get it, I get it, but I also understand that when you see it, when you allow yourself to open up to it, you become converted. And part of that I think is from God. I think God, more than anybody, wants these children liberated. I think he weeps more than anybody for these kids. So, if he can find an adult, who is willing to open their mind enough and not walk out of the room, he will help convert you, and put that passion into you, fill you with his spirit, and call you. He will call anybody, if you are going to help save his kids. And I just want people to go through the same conversion that I went through. I am kind of a missionary for trafficking, right. I mean, I am trying to evangelize here and get people converted to the cause, because that is who I am. I have been converted to the cause. And it hurt!        Mark: The cause of freedom. Tim: The cause of freedom. But it hurts to be converted, because you must leave something at the door, and that is your innocence. You must leave it. And who wants to give that up? But you must do that. You must make that sacrifice. And it hurts, and you cry, and you have moments that are embarrassing - and we’ll get into some of these. There were times, when I was like a child in my wife’s arms weeping and she is holding me, and I am just shaking. Still happens to me... I used to not talk about it, but I just talk about it now. It hurts, it hurts to get into this cause, because the cause of freedom requires you to fight evil, and evil hurts. But what we want to do here on this show is make converts, because I know this: converts to this cause equals liberty to children. And what greater thing can we do than bring liberty to children?   Mark: Thank you. And, because your last words were so good, I’ll sign off for you from OUR headquarters. Good night!    

This week, we have a brief discussion about how third party ad networks affect performance on news sites before talking with Sophie Shepherd. Sophie is a Senior Designer at Ushahidi, a non-profit software company that develops free and open-source products for information collection, visualization, and interactive mapping. We discussed the challenges of designing for international users with minimal data speed, how Ushahidi brings data and information to regions with nearly no connection, designing with task completion in mind, and more. ##Show Links: Sophie Shepherd Follow Sophie on Twitter Ushahidi Lara Hogan - A List Apart - Showing Performance Global Mobile Book Eric Meyer Crisis Design Rust Belt Refresh ##Transcript Katie: Welcome. You're listening to Episode 8 of The Path to Performance, the podcast dedicated to everyone to make the web faster. I am your host, Katie Kovalcin. Tim: And I'm your other host, Tim Kadlec and yeah, you nailed it; this is Episode 8. Well done! Katie: I was like, oh yeah, I totally know which episode it is. Wait: no, I don't. This is Episode 8. Tim: I mean, it's understandable; the numbers are getting higher, it's getting harder and harder. Katie: Totally out of control it's on more than one hand now! Tim: Yeah, once you've thrown that second hand, things get really complicated. It gets worse when you have to start taking off the socks and using your toes as well! That's where I always get hung up! Katie: You can wear flip-flops and then you don't have to worry about it. Tim: True, true. Katie: How are you, Tim? Tim: I'm doing OK; I'm actually wearing flip-flops right now! Yeah, I am! Katie: It's warm in Wisconsin? Tim: It is warm, for once. Yeah, I'm doing good; enjoying my day. And you? Katie: I'm good as well. The sun is shining here, which is a very rare thing in Ohio this summer and I feel like I have been whining about it for so long but today, I'm not whining. Tim: That's good! That's good! I'm guessing, we could maybe one of these times maybe we'll have an episode where we just kind of whine all the way through, but otherwise I think people probably enjoy the non-whining better. Katie: We can just have a bummer episode! Tim: Yeah, just a downer of an episode where we just air all our grievances about everything… Katie: We just talk in emo voice, just like…mwww…yeah, the web does actually kinda suuuuck… Tim: Yeah, exactly! I think this goes over well, I think this is maybe like a special Christmas edition. Katie: That is a really good idea. Tim: Right in time for the holidays. Katie: Christmas Bummer Episode! Tim: This is brilliant. That has to happen; I'm writing this down. Anyway, but glad to hear you're doing good now on this totally not Christmas at all episode. That's good. Katie: Yeah, on this summer-sunshine flip-flop fun-time episode! Tim: Yay! Katie: So, on the note of cool things, there's this episode from the Washington Post where in kind of a similar fashion, I know we talked a couple of months ago about Vox sort of declaring performance bankruptcy, Washington Post kinda did the same thing and talked about in an article the other day and that was pretty cool. They mentioned it sort of being in response to the instant articles and talking about just ads on news sites generally kind of sucky for performance, but I really liked this quite that it ended on that we have very little control over ads that load late or slowly but we wanted to make the core use experience as solid as possible because that is what we have control over and that's kind of a cool way to think about performance, just focusing on making good the core part that you do have control over. Tim: Yeah, and I think that's just generally awesome advice for anybody, because the ad work stuff comes up a lot and you have very little control over those third party ad networks and unfortunately a lot of them are super-slow right now but also essential for business but I like that they made the clear distinction between their core experience and understanding that the ads is just something you're going to have to tack on afterwards but mitigate the issues as much as possible. I think that's just really solid advice for any publisher. Katie: Yeah, absolutely. It's a nice article, it's a quick read; I recommend giving that a little skim or browse. Tim: Definitely. And then of course, Lara Hogan, who has made a habit out of writing good things over and over and over again or providing good performance advice in general, she wrote a post for A List Apart about showing performance; basically getting into some of the things she talked about way back in Episode 1 with us and also in her book about the importance of making performance visual: going into the dashboards and things like that, that they have up at Etsy and making sure that people can actually see the difference in performance. Katie: Yeah, she tweeted a little quick video a while ago and it might actually be in that article, I haven't had a chance to read it yet; it's on my to-do list but she posted a video of their video systems and it's really cool, it's really awesome to see that. Did I tell you that Lara, she talks about donuts all the time and donuts being her reward for good performance, achievements, good things like that, and when I saw Lara in New York a couple weeks ago, she took me to The Donut Spot that's in her neighborhood and I was so excited! Tim: Yeah, you told me. She's never taken me to The Donut Spot. I'm a little disappointed. I'm excited for you though: that sounds really cool. That's kind of… Katie: You know what? It was a really good donut because she says she's not a fan of the hipster donuts with a bunch of stupid toppings like cereal and candy bars and crap. Tim: Like the voodoo donuts thing in Portland? Katie: Yeah. These are just some straight-up home-town donuts in Brooklyn; I guess not really home-town but they were good! Tim: That's good. This is just like plain glazed? I want to know how far down the rabbit hole you went. Katie: We got banana…no, not banana: they were like custard-filled ones with the chocolate icing. I'm not a donut expert but those good ones! Tim: Gotcha, OK. That's a safe choice. Katie: Not the white sugary whipped cream-filled, the kind of yellowy-custard cream-filled ones; those are good ones. I don't know the distinction: is one cream and one custard? Is one icing and one cream? I don't know. Tim: I think it's usually like an icing and cream thing. Depending on where you go, it's almost like pure frosting is what it tastes like you're eating… Katie: Yeah, like you bite in and you're just like, oh my… Tim: Yeah, it's like there's frosting on the outside of the donut and frosting shoved down the inside as well and you just feel the cavities forming as you're eating them. It's great. It's a really good experience. But that's good. No, I did not…you did tell me this and that's very awesome, very cool. It's kinda like… Katie: Sorry; I'm obviously still thinking about that. Tim: I don't blame you. Katie: It was an experience. But, back to today's episode! We are talking to Sophie Shepherd and the big reason we wanted to get Sophie on here is not only because she's an awesome designer but because she has experience with working on products that are primarily used in developing countries that typically have the less than ideal device scenarios that we kind of always talk about in theory but she has some really great insight on talking a bout it in practice and actually designing for those devices and scenarios so it's going to be really interesting. Tim: Yeah, it'll be a nice fresh take, a different perspective than we usually get. Very cool. Katie: Cool. Well, let's go hear from Sophie. Katie: And we're back with Sophie Shepherd from Ushahidi. Sophie; can you tell us a little bit about Ushahidi and what exactly that is? Sophie: Sure. So, the what exactly it is, it's a Swahili word that means "Testimony". A lot of people are like, "Usha-what?" so it's not English so don't feel bad if you can't say it. And the company was founded in 2008 in Kenya so in 2008 what was happening in Kenya. there was an election that was fairly corrupt and there was quite a bit of violence broke out and some bloggers who were in Kenya and living in Kenya realized that they needed to do something to help out as well as just writing about what was happening, so they made a product in which people could submit reports of different places where the election was happening, different polling stations and this way they could say, there's been violence here, someone was killed here or this is a safe place where you can go to vote, or there's fraud happening. And what Ushahidi does is it takes all of these different reports and collects them into one place and provides a list and a map for them. So that's how it was founded; it's now a number of products but the name of our main platform is still Ushahidi and the purpose of it is still too collect data, crowd-source data. It's oftentimes gets mapped but isn't necessarily, we're re-doing the platform right now so that it's not only map data; it can really be anything that users submit. Katie: Awesome. So, spoiler alert, I know Sophie really well so I know the details of what she does and what really struck me and why I wanted to get her on the podcast so bad is because you deal a lot with users that are in places that have really poor connectivity and the products that you're designing are really crucial information that they need to get to. Can you talk a little bit about all of that and the challenges that you face when designing for that? Sophie: Sure. So, I think something that's really interesting is that it's not only poor connectivity but the kind of contexts in which people are using our products are unique. Not exclusively, but oftentimes they're used in crisis situations, so people don't have a whole lot of time. A lot of the time, the power could be down or internet could be down, so it's not only we have to think about connectivity but also ways that people are submitting information. This has been the first project I've worked on where it's not just, when we talk about performance, it's not just people needing to load something fast but it's about access and accessibility so, built into our product is people can anonymously text stuff in and that'll become a part of our system so it's really thinking about this whole ecosystem of access and ways of submitting information rather than just a website. Katie: Can you talk a little bit about what that means exactly, more than just a website? How else are you working around those connectivity and accessibility issues? Sophie: Yes, well, Ushahidi as a whole, not only with our platform but we have a lot of other companies that have spun out from the product itself, so there's a company Brick which is really, really awesome. It was founded by someone who was also a founder in Ushahidi and they make wifi devices that are super-rugged; they work off 3G connections so you can take those anywhere. We were in Kenya and they have all these attachments so it can be solar-powered wifi, so we had a group meeting in Kenya and we were all accessing the internet in the middle of nowhere on a beach from this device we had. So, it's thinking more about getting people information. Similarly we do a lot with SMS so if someone only has a phone they can text in a report or receive a response saying, OK, this has been confirmed, through their phone. Tim: This is fascinating stuff. I always think it's very interesting to hear the perspective outside of what we're used to in the little bubble that we get to live in here in the United States tech industry. This is taking everything in terms of the importance of building something that is going to work on different devices and the importance of building something that's going to perform well and this is really scaling up the importance of doing that, the vitality of doing that from just business metrics to, like you're saying, people's lives at stake in some of these cases. I'm curious; you mentioned being in Kenya and using those devices to get access. You can't obviously develop all the time in Kenya, so how are you finding ways to get that experience here, when you're building stuff from the United States so that you're feeling what it's going to be like on those, a 2G or a 3G connection or whatever it happens to be? Sophie: It's definitely a challenge for me because not only am I working every day on a really good connection but I've never really not had that; maybe five years ago my connection was not as good as it was now but I think I've always been as far as connection speeds in the one per cent, but we have a really great user advocacy team at Ushahidi so this is not only thinking about performance and website metrics, but we have a whole team that is dedicated to making sure that our users are satisfied, listening to what their needs are and responding in that way and also helping them, because this is a product that then gets extended and they can download it and set up their own deployments to use the product so we have a team that works really closely with people who are actually using it, which is terrific because we get a lot of feedback through that. Tim: I was going to say, are some of the team members in Kenya? Sophie: Uh-huh. Yeah, we have one person in Kenya, one person in Canada and then we have as part of, we have a specific user testing wing that's in Kenya but what they do is, since they are so in touch with people who use this stuff all over the world, they're good at being able to not only test it in Kenya but test it elsewhere and talk to…we have a large group using this stuff in Nepal right now because of the earthquake so they're in touch with them, checking that everything's working OK, getting any feedback from them. Katie: Do you tend to look at what specific devices the majority of users in these areas are using and start building and testing there or how does that work out? What's the size of an iPhone, that tends to be our default? What devices are you really thinking about in those areas? Sophie: It's interesting because right now, we are in the midst of re-building this product and so a lot of the people out there who are using it right now are using Version 2 which is the older version and at this point I don't even know how many years old it is but it's fairly outdated. It still works really well but it's not responsive; it's hard, we've noticed that quite a lot of people are using it on a desktop but that's only because it doesn't work very well on a phone so it'll be really interesting, we're launching the new one which is fully responsive and a lot more modern in this way to see how people end up using it. But it's tough because we can't say, iPhone users use this because it's used really everywhere in the world so maybe if it's used in the US it is going to be on an iPhone more, whereas elsewhere, it's Android but we try to cast a really wide net so there's an Android app that will be used for collecting information, you can submit by SMS. The new version's going to be totally responsive so what we try to do is not really focus on one but make sure that everyone can use it. Katie: So, you've been working on a responsive re-design and everything we've talked about has been the poor connectivity and all of that. How has performance played into those decisions when building this site or the product again for this new version? Sophie: It's a continuous consideration and process of checks and balances. One thing is that, thinking about images: part of this new system is we're able to have people submit images as part of their reports so that's something that we still have not quite figured out how we should work with how to then deliver those back to people and also thinking about different JavaScript libraries that we're using. It's a constant balance, so I think we're still figuring it out. We've done quite a bit of user-testing but more UX user-testing but the application itself is not totally done, it hasn't been built yet, so I think that's to come in terms of optimizing how it's going to work exactly. But from the design and front-end, we've definitely been keeping things really light and really the only question that we have is how we're going to treat images. Tim: Is it primarily a matter of using them or not using them or is it a degree of compression in terms of getting them to a point where maybe they're a little pixilated and ugly but they're balanced: the trade-off is that they're going to perform well on those types of networks? What are you battling with, with the images? Sophie: Well, I think basically every single image that is ever going to be on the site is going to be submitted by a user, so we don't know exactly the sizes of images that are going to come in and then at what point we are then going to compress them or shrink them and how we're going to do that and then how they're going to then be delivered back out. Yeah. Tim: So it's getting a system in place for all the user-generated content? Sophie: Exactly, yes. Tim: Gotcha. OK. Katie: So, you talk a lot about style guides and patter libraries and Sophie I know that's how you like to design and work. What is that process looking like? Do you do testing as you go on designs and see how performing it is or how fast it's loading under those different circumstances? Can you just talk a little bit about your design thinking? Sophie: Yeah. What we have been doing is we did all the UX fairly separately, thinking about just user flows and how things were going to be laid out and how things should work and then we did some visual design and then we started combining these by building the pattern library, so we took out patterns from visual design and eventually we've just started building templates and designing in the browser because we have enough of these patterns to build upon and it's been really great; this is the first time that I've worked in this way and what I really love about it is that each of our patterns and components basically stand on their own so it's really easy to look at them and understand exactly where certain weights are coming from. By designing modularly, we can pull those out rather than seeing a page as a whole and not really understand what's causing what. Tim: In a prior episode, we were talking to Jeff Lembeck of Filament Group and he mentioned what he called the "Jank Tank" which is this big box of basically ugly, horrible, slow devices. Considering how wide the net you're spreading, do you have anything similar? Is there a Ushahidi Jank Tank that you guys go to? Sophie: There isn't, but I love that idea. Tim: Yeah, I think we were fans of that too. Sophie: Is it like…what does he mean exactly? Tim: The idea was having… Sophie; …lowest common denominator kind of devices? Time: Yeah, basically grabbing cheap devices or old devices and firing those up: things that are going to be maybe a few years old and are probably going to be a huge challenge to make things feel fluid and work well on those and you have those handy to test them out and see what honestly might be a more typical user would experience than the high end stuff. Sophie: Yeah, we don't have that here in the States; I feel bad calling it a Jank Tank because that's negative-sounding, but in the office in Kenya, they have…they all work in a building and there's quite a few tech companies that work in there and they have something like a Mobile Device Lab and I think it was sponsored by a mobile company there but I was there earlier in the year and it kind of blew my mind; I put a picture of it on Twitter that we can refer to in the Speaker Notes. But that was all of these phones that were phones that I hadn't even necessarily seen, that they don't sell in the States, and they're all used for testing so at some point probably now that I'm talking about it, I'm realizing we should do it sooner rather than later, they have a whole testing lab there that we can test this product on. Tim: Nice. A mobile device lab does admittedly sound a little bit more ??? serious. Katie: Everything that you're saying sounds like, just tying in that accessibility and performance are going hand in hand and it sounds like you've just learned a great deal of empathy in your time there. Is that true and has that influenced your design? Sophie: Yeah, definitely. I think something that has really changed in my mind is thinking about when doing the design, what actions are people going to want to take, so I think that goes with performance too: if we can only load this one button that says "submit a report" and skip all of the images then that's the most important thing, so, really thinking about where to guide people and what the most important and crucial actions are before loading and everything else, so as a designer that's been definitely something that, previously I was doing client work and it was like we had this long list of requirements that we had to fit in and now it's kind of re-assessing and re-prioritizing what requirements actually are and having different levels of this is the one thing they need to really use this app and then here's all of this other helpful stuff that could be called crucial but isn't actually life or death crucial. Katie: That's really interesting. Do you think that there's any way that, for those of us still working on client projects, to have those conversations with the client to try to be like, "no, really, but the marketing video isn't truly required"; exercises in priority and stuff: do you have any tips for paring down those requirements? Sophie: I think it's tough if your talking to a marketing person because they'd be like, "no, literally I'm going to die if I don't get this on there." Katie: And you're like, "no, literally, people are on our products like…" Sophie: Yeah. I think any time it's easier to say, "does this go above this in the priority list" people are willing to answer that question rather than either or. So, in general, communicating and deciding things I would recommend ordering rather than choosing people to sacrifice things. Tim: And it seems like that's clarified too in, I would guess one of the reasons why it works so well where you are is because that task, if you're looking at what the most important thing for the user to do is, it's so very clear and so very critical whereas on maybe on a more traditional thing where you're working with marketers or whatever, they may not have as clear a sense of, what is the ultimate purpose of this site? And then it becomes a lot harder to do the prioritization without that. Sophie: Yeah; it's funny because we're in the process right now of re-designing the company site as well as re-designing the product itself and it shouldn't be, because there's no life or death, but it's so much more complicated to prioritize stuff on the company site because there's so many different types of audiences and services that it needs to provide whereas on the app itself, it's pretty clear to say, what's the most important action for someone to take. Tim: Within the new site, do you still have to take into consideration a lot of the same sort of constraints in terms of the different devices and connectivity because that's who your audience is that you're marketing to, or are you marketing to a different group through the site? Sophie: Yeah, the site will be, well that's up for debate; that's I think what we're still trying to figure out. I think by default it's a good idea to not ever say, "oh well only people in the States with nice phones are going to look at this" just because that's a dangerous attitude to have, but it's possibly less of priority for the site itself. Tim: So, going back to prioritizing performance within the actual apps and stuff that you're doing: did you have set targets that you were looking at when you were working V3 of this? Were there hard-set goals; we are not going to go over this amount of weight or we are not going to take longer than this for the map of data to appear or anything like that? Sophie: Yeah, so we set a performance budget and we've set a few of them; we set one for the front-end so what we've done is build this pattern library and we have all of our, we're calling them "weight-outs" which are basically our different views within the app itself. So we had an initial goal for that, that we've met and then we set a separate one for the build itself and that's still in process, so hopefully we can get around that target. I like this too because instead of having one end-goal we can really check as we go. Tim: Yeah, it's nice to have it broken down like that. Can we ask what the targets are, just out of curiosity? Sophie: I can look them up but I don't know them right now. Tim: That's fine. Just curious. Was it in terms of the weight or is it a different sort of, more like an experience-focused metric or anything like that, that you're targeting? Sophie: Yeah, we did a weight and a load time. Tim: Gotcha. OK. Katie: It sounds like you've worked in some of the perceived performance thinking too when you're saying, what's the critical information to load first. Sophie: Yeah, for me as a designer, that's definitely something that I can relate to more and I think in some ways it's possibly more important. I think they work as a team but… Tim: I think it is. And I think that's…I think or I hope that that's what, within the performance community, the people who really that's what they do focus on, I think that that's where everything is starting to, we're starting to wake up to that and certainly to shift towards understanding that it really is about the experience and making sure that the critical things are coming in, whatever the top task, whatever the most important features are on the page or coming in and measuring those sorts of things, instead of this blind race to the finish that we've kind of had in the past. Sophie: Yeah. I'm curious to see how that thinking changes because I love the idea of a performance budget but I think sometimes it can be a little limiting and you wouldn't want to sacrifice certain things just to fit into the performance budget. Not limiting, but I think it's very concrete whereas it should be a fairly fluid depending on context of the site itself. Tim: Sure, yeah, it doesn't dictate what goes on; it's another consideration or it's part of another piece in the puzzle. Sophie: Right. At the same time, it's the easiest way to communicate goals. Tim: True. It's hard to without it having a hard set thing, it's very hard, yeah. Sophie: Yeah, until you have the design done, you can't say, OK, our goal is that this is going to load and then this is going to load this much later. It helps to have a number that everyone can refer back to. Katie: So, when you say for everyone to communicate, who is that? Is that between you and the developers? Is this something that your leadership is really that's close to their heart as well? Sophie: Yeah, I think when I said that it was more coming from my experience with client work, where you're using this number as a kind of tactic to force a client to decide on certain things. For us, since we're all working internally, I think definitely any…basically, everyone wants to see it be as fast as it possibly can, so we're all working towards the same thing. Katie: Is there ever a push-back to even like, "OK, now that we've hit that, let's try another goal that's even faster"? Sophie: Not yet, because we haven't launched it, but I wouldn't be surprised if we launch it and get certain feedback that it wasn't loading or it wasn't working quite right on something. I'm really curious to see once it's out there and people are using it, how people respond. Katie: Yeah, I'm really curious to see what metrics you find out from that. Tim: Did you make a distinction…there's the cutting the mustard approach that the BBC popularized which is the core experience goes to maybe older, less capable browsers/devices and the enhanced experience goes to everybody else. One of the things that that fails at, or that doesn't take into consideration which seems like it would be really important for Ushahidi is the situation where you have somebody is on a very nice device but the connectivity is really awful. Did you have to make any distinction between different experiences or do you just have one experience and that experience itself is extremely lightweight, no matter what the scenario is? Was that enough for you to accomplish or you needed to do? Sophie: Yeah, that's funny; we had our company retreat in Kenya so it was I think maybe about half, maybe a little less of our company is in the US so we all went there with our snazzy iPhones and still couldn't connect to anything and it really, I think in terms of empathy, made us realize: oh, wait a second. But in terms of yeah, I think we're just going to try to make it fast for everyone. We don't have a whole lot of enhancements for people on quicker systems yet. Katie: When you were in Kenya, were there any things that were especially awful to try to load, like you're used to just being part of your everyday life? I'm just curious. Sophie: I remember reading Twitter, on the Twitter app and everything loaded except for the pictures and it made you realize just how often people supplement their tweets with pictures; I remember getting really frustrated about it. Katie: That's interesting. Sophie: But I didn't even really try to do a lot of stuff because it really didn't look very well. Same thing on Instagram; it's like sometimes this progressive loading thing; I would rather it not load at all than, oh, I see all of these people posted great pictures that I can't look at. I'd rather not know than… Katie: Or like the tweets having fomo, oh, you had a joke and I can't see the punch-line! Sophie: Exactly! Katie: That's really interesting because when we're just designing here in a bubble it's like, "well I think that would be fine for you to just know that it's there but not see it" but then when you're actually using it, you're like: no, this sucks. Sophie: Yeah, it's like actively frustrating. Tim: How often do you get to Kenya? Sophie: I'm new to the company; I've only been here since the beginning of the year but I think they do a retreat every year but not necessarily always in Kenya; I think every other year it's in Kenya. And I think other people on the team, it depends, we'll do these what we call Hit Team Meetings because everyone is remote and then mini-teams will get together and all work together for a week so those have been all over the place since people live on opposite ends of the world, depending on who's meeting they usually choose a place that is fairly central for everyone to get to. Katie: We'll start to have a list of sites, Sophie, how much is this really crappy, wherever you end up going… Sophie: How long does this take? Katie: Look it up and tell me how much it sucks. Sophie: It is cool to have people on the team everywhere for that reason. Tim: Sure, I bet that gives you a really nice overall picture of a whole bunch of different landscapes from a technical perspective. Sophie: Yeah. Katie: I know, I didn't prepare a list of questions like I should have! Tim: It's all right, I'm actually having a lot of fun just going off the cuff on this, knowing almost nothing. I did a little bit of research and I had heard of Ushahidi from this big fat book about mobile on a global scale that was put out a couple of years ago. Sophie: That's cool. What was that book? Tim: It's called Global Mobile. It's six hundred pages and each chapter is written by a different author on a different topic and I think Ushahidi came up twice… Sophie: Oh, that's awesome. Tim: …in the book. Sophie: Do you know what they referenced or what it was…. Tim: One was just talking about how…I don't remember one of the references in much detail. The other one I know that they were talking about a variety of different mobile technological solutions that were out there; I think they were focused primarily on Africa in that chapter or similar areas and they were talking about the different services that are making use of technologies that we might consider a little bit more simple, but they're doing really powerful things with it and so I think that they were focused on the SMS aspect, if I remember right. Sophie: Yeah, it's been definitely challenging, but also interesting that designing a product that is not used for one specific thing; it's very much user-focused and people will download it and decide how they use it, so it's been a challenge to design for that and to keep it well designed but also really, really flexible. Tim: Which is why I guess it's so important I guess that you are getting a chance to experience at least a little bit every once in a while because everybody talks about front-end design perspective, from a development perspective, how important it is to put yourself in your user's shoes and when you're talking about what Ushahidi is dealing with, and it's not just the devices or the browser or the connections: it's the situations; it's just so hard. It's so hard to put yourself in those sorts of shoes and understand what it must feel like to use the application or the site in those sorts of scenarios; that's such a huge challenge. Sophie: Yeah, there's no way that, well it sounds selfish saying it, but hopefully there's no way I would ever actually be able to experience that but I think that is why we have such a strong and valuable user advocacy team so that they can really communicate with them when people are in those situations and as they're using it in those situations. Tim: Do you get feedback from the users that are pertaining directly to things like how quickly they're able to report something or how quickly they're able to get access to the data that's been reported, in terms of it takes too long sort of a thing, not just a usability thing but from a performance perspective? Sophie: We haven't. Or not that I know of. Tim: Well, maybe that means you're doing an awesome job! Sophie: We'll see. It's also tough because the new version is yet to be used on a wide…by a lot of people, so we'll see, but it is great because we have the product is also open source, so we have a lot of community submissions and ideas so this is again the first time I've worked on something like that where I'll just be in my normal task list that we use internally as a team and I will get one from…I'm in Katmandu and this thing is not working; can you add this? So it is really cool to see that people care about improving the product. Tim: That's awesome. Katie: Is there anything that you've learned from going through this process and being hit with all of these pretty heavy design constraints that are just, oh man, there's no way I can ignore that. Has that changed your view on design, even outside of this product in particular? Sophie: I think that this has, compared to how I used to design, I'm keeping things a lot more simple, not even necessarily visually; visually as well but also just in how they work and not trying to dictate how something should work. Oftentimes we'll, with other people in my design team or sometimes with our developers, we'll discuss how something, spend hours doing flows and then just realizing, why don't we just let people do what they want to do and take a step back and not define so much how this should be used, so I think just the fact that so many different people are using it for different ways, I've found that it's often best to leave things open and then to not over-complicate them. Katie: Is that kind of freeing? Sophie: Errr….it's been difficult because I'm so used to not being like that. But yeah, kind of. For me as a designer it's been kind of hard to let go of control. Katie: Yeah, that's usually I think our downfall as designers is wanting to control everything and that's kind of a big part about embracing performance too: it just sounds boring to design for performance, even though it's not and it's just like anything else. Sophie: Yeah, I think that I talked to ??? about this a long, long time ago and I remember it's stuck with me in terms of performance but also it's kind of user advocacy side of design, which is that it's not in conflict with the design; you shouldn't think of performance as taking away from visual design but it's just a piece of design so it's just another aspect of UX and if it loads faster, then that'll make the design better. Katie; It means you did your job well! Sophie. Yeah, exactly. Tim: At the end of the day it's about, especially in your case, but at the end of the day it's really about how quickly can the people using the site or the application get the task done that they came to the site to do and so that makes performance comes right up front and center along with any other bit of the process really, information architecture, clear content structure and good visual design; it all contributes. Sophie: That's what design is, right? Getting people to be able to do what they want as easily as possible. Katie: Is this something that you were thinking about before having these experiences in these other parts of the world, or was that the eye-opener of, oh-whoa, my designs should encapsulate this? Sophie: Yeah, I think it's always something theoretically that I could be like, your designs have to load really fast, of course, but selfishly I've always wanted them to look really cool or try out some latest thing that's trending on the web. So I think it's helped me step out and realize I'm not designing this for me. If I want to try something, I can just do it on my own site. Katie: So, I'm wondering if that's maybe the first step for designers that are not wanting to think about it… Sophie: Make them design something for someone in crisis. Katie: Yeah! Sophie: At an agency, every junior designer has to design for… Tim: Oh man! Sophie: …life or death situations. Katie: It's part of the interview process, you need to whiteboard a crisis design. Sophie: Yeah! Tim: Talk about no pressure right off the gate, that's what you're dealing with! Sophie: Have either of you seen Eric Meyer's presentation? Tim: I have not, but I've heard it's excellent. Sophie: I really want to. Katie: I want to see it as well. Sophie: It sounds really… Katie: Everything you are talking about is making we think of that. Sophie: I would really, really love to hear, I don't know if he would…he could be a good guest on the podcast just to talk about his experience. Tim: Yeah, I'd love to talk to Eric. I've heard the presentation is just fantastic but I haven't had a chance to catch it live. I don't know if it's recorded or not anywhere but if so, I haven't seen it. Katie; I think if any of you want come hang out in Ohio, I believe I would have to double-check, but I think he's giving that Rustbelt Refresh in Cleveland in September. Tim: I do like that conference. I did that last year, it's a lot of fun. Katie: So, you want to come hang out in Ohio and see it? Tim: Sunny Cleveland! Katie: Where the lake caught on fire! Sophie: Oh my God! Tim: I don't think I heard this. Katie; I think it was before I ever lived in Ohio, ten or so years ago. It may have been the river, it may have been the lake, I can't remember. One of them was so polluted that it caught on fire at some point. (45:11) Tim: That sounds a lovely! Sophie: That's terrifying! Tim: My only knowledge of Cleveland, which I think is probably upsetting and insulting to all people who live in Cleveland… Katie: Drew Carey Tim: Yep. So, I apologize for that! Sophie: I've been to Cleveland; I spent two weeks in Cleveland. Katie: What? Sophie: I was going through, you know, being young and wanting to work for Obama during the election but even then, I don't know what's in Cleveland, even after spending time there. Katie: I have been to Cleveland twice and I don't know. I live two hours from it; I couldn't tell you what's in Cleveland. Sophie: Really cheap houses if I remember; lots of empty, cheap houses! Katie: One time I tried out to be on The Price is Right this is when Drew Carey was the host and because I am really bad at being like, wooow, cookie-crazy person to be on The Price is Right, they interview every person that goes through the process and like, "why should we pick you?" and my only response was just like, "I'm from Ohio. Just like Drew. Cleveland Rocks, right?" Sophie: Certainly good for TV. Katie: Yeah, well, we'll talk about Ohio. Obviously I did not make it! Tim: That's sad! Sophie: There's still hope; you could try again. Tim: Don't give up on that. Katie: No, that was actually…. Sophie: Don't give up on your dreams. Tim: No, you've got to follow through. Katie: That was horrific; you're just like cattle being herded for six hours through this line as they interview every single person that goes in the thing, so if you're ever in LA and thinking, it would be fun to go on The Price is Right: it's not. Sophie: Think again! Katie: Sophie, you never did that when you lived there? Sophie: A lot of people I knew did. Katie: Did anyone ever get picked? Sophie: They did it…I grew up in LA and they filmed Jeopardy I think right next to my High School and they would do it as a fundraising thing where you would…they'd get a group things of tickets to Jeopardy and then the cheerleading squad or whoever would try to sell them individually. Katie: Whoa! Sophie: That's the closest I've gotten. Katie: Growing up in LA sounds wildly different from anywhere else! Was it? Sophie: We didn't have any lakes that lit on fire! Katie: Wasn't your High School the one from Grease? Sophie: Yep! Katie: Oh man. Sophie: And Party of Five. Is that what that show was called? Katie: Yeah. Tim: That's kinda cool. Katie: I'm more interested in Rydell High though. Sophie: I think they filmed it in partially different schools but the stadium was our stadium. Katie: The track where Danny's trying to be a jock and running around? Sophie: Yeah, yeah. Katie: Aw man, that's the worst part when Danny's trying to be a jock! Sophie: Wonder Years. Wonder Years, that's the block I grew up on. Katie: Really? Sophie: Yep. Katie: Dang, you have Wonder Years, Alison has Dawson's Creek. Sophie: Dawson's Creek. Way before my time. Katie: I want to grow up on a teen drama! Sophie: The Yellow Brick Road was also the street, from the Wizard of Oz. Tim: Where was the Yellow Brick Road? Sophie: Before the houses were built, they filmed it on the street that my house was on. Tim: What? Sophie: And then years later, they had a reunion for all of the oompa-loompas that I accidentally walked on and I was sort of….what? Katie: Were they dressed up? Sophie: No. Tim: Wait, wait, wait…you just said oompa-loompas, but isn't that…that's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, right? Sophie: Not oompa-loompas. Munchkins! The Munchkins! Tim: I was like, wait a minute… Katie: Glad you got that 'cos I didn't! Sophie: I didn't either, I was like, this sounds right. Tim: Yeah, OK, I just wanted to clarify which movie it was. Sophie: Can we cut this out? We're going to get complaints from Little People of America organization. Tim: Yeah, that's fine. Actually we could use a few complaints. We haven't got many or any yet. Katie: Thanks for bringing it up. Now we're going to….well, if you're looking for feedback, let me tell you...you can lay off the chit-chat. Tim: We've gotten plenty, plenty of negative feedback and complaints so please don't bother sending those emails or letters. There, that should… Katie: I'm going to write you a strongly worded letter about your podcast! Tim: It happens. Sophie: This really went off the rails! Tim: It did, but you know what? That's cool. That's all right. I feel like… (50:03) Katie: It was getting really heavy, so you know we to lighten it up. Tim: It was, we had to lighten it up and I feel like it's kind of weird that we had gone this far without talking about Drew Carey so, you know, however many episodes we're into this and Drew Carey had never come up; seems wrong. Katie: Really? Sophie: Give us some Drew Carey facts, Katie! Katie: Actually, well I don't know any Drew Carey facts but I'm sure Tim has lots because that seems like that's your era of TV. Tim: I'm not that old, all right? Katie: Yeah, but Everybody Loves Raymond, you'll never… Tim: Yeah, I actually had…. Sophie: Are you Everybody? Tim: No, no. Am I? Sophie: Do you love Raymond? Tim: I do love Raymond; I do. It was a good show, all right? It was a good show. Under-appreciated by the current generation! Sophie: It was the most popular show ever at the time. Tim: It was really popular; really popular. Sophie: Did you just watch it on multiple TVs over and over again to up the ratings? Tim: Errr…. Katie: He had it going on every TV in the house, the whole day and night! Sophie: The syndication too so they're getting those checks, all from Tim! Katie: Tim loves Raymond! Sophie: New TV show! Tim: All right, all right; neither one of you are ever invited back on this podcast; even you, Katie. That's it, that's the end of it. I'm going to go start my own podcast where we're going to talk about Everybody Loves Raymond and The Drew Carey Show and things like that. Katie: Indiana Jones Tim: Indiana Jones, yep. This really did get off the rails. My gosh! Sophie: Yeah, feel weird going back to talking about crisis. Tim: So, well, you know, maybe we don't, there was a lot of really good, like Katie said, it was getting really serious and really awesome discussion, I think, around performance and it was really cool to hear somebody who is coming at it from that global perspective which, it's just not something that we commonly think about a lot, for most of us aren't dealing with on a day to day basis, so it's really interesting to have somebody come in and burst the bubble a little bit and give us a broader perspective. Katie: Yeah, it's great because I think like you said, Sophie, earlier: in theory everybody's like, it's nice and stuff and obviously we talk a lot about performance and everything and it's one of those things that I think everybody is like, yeah, yeah, in theory yeah, we want it to be fast because we don't want to be shamed by Twitter, but… Sophie: Other web designers! Katie: Yeah, basically. So it's great for you to come in here and give us the perspective of what that actually means and hopefully shed some light on that empathy. Sophie: Yeah, thank you for having me. Katie: Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. Tim: Going forward, it anybody wants to follow along and hear more about what Ushahidi's doing or about what you're doing, how do they do that? Sophie: For Ushahidi, I would recommend following Ushahidi on Twitter, ushahidi.com for a lot of information about all their different products and blogposts and then for me, my website is sophieshepherd.com Tim: Very cool. Katie: What about any social media that you may have because, I might be biased, but I think Sophie you have a pretty good account that's pretty funny! Sophie: My Twitter unfortunately is sophshepherd, because there's a British teenager named Sophie Shepherd who took that from me. So, don't follow her unless you want to hear a lot of complaining about tests and boyfriends. Katie: Do you follow her? Sophie: Occasionally! Then I get too mad about it and then I think, what if they think it's me? Katie: Is she also blonde and kind of looks like you? Sophie: Yeah, I've sent her a message; she does kind of. I sent her a message on Facebook once and she went, what are you freak? And then that was it. Katie; Really? Sophie: Yep. Katie: She called you a freak? Sophie: Yeah. I'll put a screenshot in our speaker notes! Katie: OK, well follow the real Sophie Shepherd then. Sophie: Yep. Tim: Well, thank you and we'll definitely have to have you on again to discuss because I feel like there's a lot more we could get into in terms of Drew Carey and Ray Romano, so in a future episode. Katie: You can do that on your separate…Everyone Loves Ray. Tim: And Tim Loves Raymond. Yeah, that's good. It'll be the initial episode. Sophie:: Tim and Ray. All right. Thanks. Bye. Tim: Thanks; bye. Katie: Thanks. Bye. Tim: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Path to Performance podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes or on our site pathtoperf.com; you can also follow along on Twitter @pathtoperf. We'd love to hear what you thought so feel free to drop us a note on Twitter or leave a raving and overly kind review on iTunes. We like to read those. And if you'd like to talk about being a guest or sponsoring a future episode, feel free to email us at hello@pathtoperf.com

Panel Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Tim Caswell (twitter github howtonode.org) AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:15 - node-webkit Similar to PhoneGap Chrome native apps Chromium 05:31 - Event loops and the browsers 06:53 - Example apps Light Table app.js 07:42 - node-webkit vs app.js 10:00 - Chrome Chrome Apps: JavaScript Desktop Development 17:44 - Security implications 25:11 - Testing node-webkit applications 27:19 - Getting a web app into a native app 31:33 - Creating Your First AppJS App with Custom Chrome Chromeless Browser Chromeless replacement Picks How mismanagement, incompetence and pride killed THQ's Kaos Studios (Jamison) The Insufficiency of Good Design by Sarah Mei (Jamison) app.js (Tim) node-webkit (Tim) Macaroni Grill’s Butternut Asiago Tortellaci (AJ) JCPenney (AJ) Mac OS Stickies (Chuck) Fieldrunners (Chuck) Node Knockout Transcript AJ: Let’s talk about boring stuff. What did you eat for breakfast? TIM: I had donuts. AJ: That sounds nutritious and delicious. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 35 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel we have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi guys! CHUCK: Tim Caswell. TIM: Hello! CHUCK: And AJ O’Neal. And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about ‘Node-webkit’. It seems like Tim is the most familiar with it, so why don’t you jump in and tell us a little bit about it? TIM: All right. Basically the idea is to make desktop apps using Node and then having HTML as your display layer for your widgets. And I start a project doing this several years ago from Topcube, but I failed miserably because I'm not that good of a C engineer. And since then, a few projects have taken up the idea. Node-webkit is one done by Intel and the main engineer there is Roger Wang. So on Roger Wang’s GitHub there is node-webkit. And the other popular one is called ‘app.js’ and I think there is a couple others as well. And some other people have taken over my Topcube project and they use it for some maps app. And all these projects had the basic idea of you have a desktop native app that has Node and node-webkit inside of it. CHUCK: So, is it kind of like PhoneGap or some of these other things for mobile? TIM: Yeah. It’s similar to PhoneGap in that, you get more privileges than a browser would have in a more native experience. Instead of just the PhoneGap extensions, you get all of Node -- you get the full Node environment -- which means you can use all that existing libraries and ecosystem. JAMISON: So how does this compare to the Chrome native apps thing? Because I know that they are more --- already have some like JS APIs that let you touch stuff on the server or things like that. Is this just – it’s not sandbox at all? TIM: Yeah. I mean, this is a native app. It’s not in your browser at all. It bundles its own webkit. JAMISON: Oooh. TIM: It’s more like -- what was that flash thing they had years ago? AJ: ‘Adobe Air’? TIM: Air yeah. It’s like Adobe Air that doesn’t suck.

Panel Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Tim Caswell (twitter github howtonode.org) AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:15 - node-webkit Similar to PhoneGap Chrome native apps Chromium 05:31 - Event loops and the browsers 06:53 - Example apps Light Table app.js 07:42 - node-webkit vs app.js 10:00 - Chrome Chrome Apps: JavaScript Desktop Development 17:44 - Security implications 25:11 - Testing node-webkit applications 27:19 - Getting a web app into a native app 31:33 - Creating Your First AppJS App with Custom Chrome Chromeless Browser Chromeless replacement Picks How mismanagement, incompetence and pride killed THQ's Kaos Studios (Jamison) The Insufficiency of Good Design by Sarah Mei (Jamison) app.js (Tim) node-webkit (Tim) Macaroni Grill’s Butternut Asiago Tortellaci (AJ) JCPenney (AJ) Mac OS Stickies (Chuck) Fieldrunners (Chuck) Node Knockout Transcript AJ: Let’s talk about boring stuff. What did you eat for breakfast? TIM: I had donuts. AJ: That sounds nutritious and delicious. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 35 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel we have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi guys! CHUCK: Tim Caswell. TIM: Hello! CHUCK: And AJ O’Neal. And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about ‘Node-webkit’. It seems like Tim is the most familiar with it, so why don’t you jump in and tell us a little bit about it? TIM: All right. Basically the idea is to make desktop apps using Node and then having HTML as your display layer for your widgets. And I start a project doing this several years ago from Topcube, but I failed miserably because I'm not that good of a C engineer. And since then, a few projects have taken up the idea. Node-webkit is one done by Intel and the main engineer there is Roger Wang. So on Roger Wang’s GitHub there is node-webkit. And the other popular one is called ‘app.js’ and I think there is a couple others as well. And some other people have taken over my Topcube project and they use it for some maps app. And all these projects had the basic idea of you have a desktop native app that has Node and node-webkit inside of it. CHUCK: So, is it kind of like PhoneGap or some of these other things for mobile? TIM: Yeah. It’s similar to PhoneGap in that, you get more privileges than a browser would have in a more native experience. Instead of just the PhoneGap extensions, you get all of Node -- you get the full Node environment -- which means you can use all that existing libraries and ecosystem. JAMISON: So how does this compare to the Chrome native apps thing? Because I know that they are more --- already have some like JS APIs that let you touch stuff on the server or things like that. Is this just – it’s not sandbox at all? TIM: Yeah. I mean, this is a native app. It’s not in your browser at all. It bundles its own webkit. JAMISON: Oooh. TIM: It’s more like -- what was that flash thing they had years ago? AJ: ‘Adobe Air’? TIM: Air yeah. It’s like Adobe Air that doesn’t suck.

Panel Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Tim Caswell (twitter github howtonode.org) AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:15 - node-webkit Similar to PhoneGap Chrome native apps Chromium 05:31 - Event loops and the browsers 06:53 - Example apps Light Table app.js 07:42 - node-webkit vs app.js 10:00 - Chrome Chrome Apps: JavaScript Desktop Development 17:44 - Security implications 25:11 - Testing node-webkit applications 27:19 - Getting a web app into a native app 31:33 - Creating Your First AppJS App with Custom Chrome Chromeless Browser Chromeless replacement Picks How mismanagement, incompetence and pride killed THQ's Kaos Studios (Jamison) The Insufficiency of Good Design by Sarah Mei (Jamison) app.js (Tim) node-webkit (Tim) Macaroni Grill’s Butternut Asiago Tortellaci (AJ) JCPenney (AJ) Mac OS Stickies (Chuck) Fieldrunners (Chuck) Node Knockout Transcript AJ: Let’s talk about boring stuff. What did you eat for breakfast? TIM: I had donuts. AJ: That sounds nutritious and delicious. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 35 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel we have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi guys! CHUCK: Tim Caswell. TIM: Hello! CHUCK: And AJ O’Neal. And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about ‘Node-webkit’. It seems like Tim is the most familiar with it, so why don’t you jump in and tell us a little bit about it? TIM: All right. Basically the idea is to make desktop apps using Node and then having HTML as your display layer for your widgets. And I start a project doing this several years ago from Topcube, but I failed miserably because I'm not that good of a C engineer. And since then, a few projects have taken up the idea. Node-webkit is one done by Intel and the main engineer there is Roger Wang. So on Roger Wang’s GitHub there is node-webkit. And the other popular one is called ‘app.js’ and I think there is a couple others as well. And some other people have taken over my Topcube project and they use it for some maps app. And all these projects had the basic idea of you have a desktop native app that has Node and node-webkit inside of it. CHUCK: So, is it kind of like PhoneGap or some of these other things for mobile? TIM: Yeah. It’s similar to PhoneGap in that, you get more privileges than a browser would have in a more native experience. Instead of just the PhoneGap extensions, you get all of Node -- you get the full Node environment -- which means you can use all that existing libraries and ecosystem. JAMISON: So how does this compare to the Chrome native apps thing? Because I know that they are more --- already have some like JS APIs that let you touch stuff on the server or things like that. Is this just – it’s not sandbox at all? TIM: Yeah. I mean, this is a native app. It’s not in your browser at all. It bundles its own webkit. JAMISON: Oooh. TIM: It’s more like -- what was that flash thing they had years ago? AJ: ‘Adobe Air’? TIM: Air yeah. It’s like Adobe Air that doesn’t suck.