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BOSSes Anne Ganguza and Tom Dheere examine the state of the voiceover industry a few months into 2025. They discuss the direct impact of political and economic events on booking trends and content. The conversation explores how corporate messaging is adapting to cultural and policy changes, the ongoing role of authenticity, and the evolving, perhaps less threatening, landscape of AI. Ultimately, they offer a message of adaptation, education, and resilience for voice actors navigating the current climate.   00:03 - Anne (Host) Hey bosses, are you new to voiceover and not sure where to start? Join the VOPeeps VI Peeps membership and get access to over 350 hours of pre-recorded classes, a 15% discount on all VOPeeps, guest workshops and free monthly workouts. This membership is perfect for those wanting to get started in the industry. Find out more at vopeeps.com. Slash join dash now.  00:32 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. And successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today Rock your business like a boss a VO boss.  00:54 - Anne (Host) Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguza. Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast and the Real Boss Series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguza, and I'm here with the one and only Mr Tom Dheere. Hello, hello, hello, hi, tom. Oh goodness, tom, we're a few months into 2025, and it's been quite a year so far, wouldn't you say I would say yes, it has.  01:13 Lots of disruption going on in the world in so many ways I would say economically, socially, I mean. It's a new administration and I know that we spoke earlier about setting your goals and starting off on the right foot for 2025 and finding out who you are. Now that we're a few months in, I think we should go back and readdress what's happening. What's going on? How are you feeling about the state of things? Let's maybe open it up with the state of our industry, the voiceover industry. How are you feeling the state of voiceover is a few months into 2025?  01:49 - Tom What's interesting about it, Anne, is that your emotional state when you are watching the news or doom scrolling on social media is going to make you feel a certain way about how everything is going and, depending on your political inclination, you may think everything is going wonderfully or you may think everything is going terribly.  02:12 But then there's that pesky little thing called reality, which is the reality of how many auditions am I getting, how often am I booking, how much money am I making? Where are those voiceover bookings coming from? And, based on what's going on in the world, how much of that is directly or indirectly affecting our individual voiceover businesses?  02:39 - Anne (Host) Absolutely, and because we're service-based right. It affects us very much. Right, it affects us because companies are hiring us to, for the most part, entertain or sell. Right, and, depending on how the companies are feeling and companies are reacting to the issues that are going on in the world today, may have a direct impact on our business.  03:01 - Tom Yeah, so just as a point of reference, let's look at 2024. Our business? Yeah, so just as a point of reference, let's look at 2024. One of the major things that happened that had a huge impact on voiceover work was the presidential election, because, distressingly late in 2024, we weren't sure who was running for president on either side of the aisle, much less who their running mates were. That had a massive effect on corporations when it came to advertising budgets and what the content of the advertising would be. So last summer, 2024, july August there was a huge dip in voiceover work across the board because companies didn't know where to put their money.  03:46 - Anne (Host) Except in political maybe.  03:47 - Tom  Except in political.  03:48 And then when September, October, hit, the political campaigns all went crazy and a lot of the advertising got stopped up because so much ad space was being taken up by political advertising.  04:02 There was a noticeable drop in commercials for television and radio because all the political ad buys were taking up all the real estate. So that is one pretty clear, direct example about how what's going on in the real world affected what was going on in the voiceover industry. So let's look at spring of 2025 of what's going on right now is since there's virtually no political ads, as in campaign ads. I mean, there's a smattering of them here and there and a smattering of issue ads, but I didn't notice any more than there usually has been, which means the void that the political ads left got immediately taken up by commercials, left got immediately taken up by commercials. So there seems to be as much work as there was at any given time in recent voiceover history. I agree with you there. But the question is, what is the content and context of the ads and other voiceover genres and what are the casting demands and what are the performance demands for?  05:09 - Anne (Host)  Now also, we're thinking, I think, right now, commercial broadcast style voiceover. When we think about that, I agree with you that, yes, there's as much work, I think, as there ever has been. However, it's the content that might be changing and the context. You're absolutely right, but also there might be in terms of industrial content, like the industries that are advertising, the industries that are hiring voice talent that may or may not be broadcast. Maybe we're talking e-learning, we're talking corporate, we're talking all the different non-broadcast style voiceover. I think, in that realm where I'm seeing I'm not seeing a drop necessarily, but I'm seeing companies looking very carefully at what they're saying and what they want their brand message to be.  05:54 - Tom Yes.  05:54 - Anne (Host) And that is very key for somebody like myself if I produce demos, to make sure that the content is reflective of the culture and the society of the times.  06:06 - Tom Yes, culture definitely has an influence on advertising broadcast and it also has an influence on internal content, e-learning content, corporate industrial content. Actually, I just realized last year I had narrated an app for a large governmental organization, let's just say, and it was about harassment in the workplace and it was a big project and I did it all and the client was thrilled and I got paid and everything was great. Just a few days ago, the client wrote me and said hey, as a result of all of these executive orders that have been stripping away DEI policies and verbiage, I had to record a decent chunk of it all over again with the new policies and whatever we'll call it, awareness of it in mind.  07:01 - Anne (Host) Yeah, that's the biggest thing that I am seeing and, again, we're not here to be political. However, the two of us need to take a realistic look as to okay, so what are companies having to do to maybe adhere to policies? Because companies that maybe depended on support from the government may have to rewrite some policies. They may have to rethink how they're speaking, and that directly impacts a lot of the corporate work that I've done and also corporate training as well I do. The majority of my work in the e-learning aspect is through corporate.  07:34 I do some educational, which I think that also can be touched, but not in such a direct manner Like, let's say, dei or I'm just trying to think like, what other types of topics and support and safety and environmental. Let's think about environmental changes. Right Before, in a lot of corporate, there was a lot of talk about sustainability, talk about climate change. There was a lot of talk about sustainability, talk about climate change. Companies wanted their audiences to hear that they were supporting these things, because that's what mattered to the majority of people, that they wanted to be on board with them. Now, is that a thing when we're talking about alternative energy right, alternate energy are we going to now be talking about drilling and fracking versus, you know, solar power or those types of things.  08:18 - Tom  Yeah, absolutely, and top-down policies are going to have a trickle-down effect, but also, as in if federal laws are changing or being enacted or being repealed, that's going to have a big effect on a lot of the policies of the companies, because they have to be compliant with local, state and federal law to be able to run their business legally and effectively. So, yeah, it will definitely have a top-down effect. The other thing is economic.  08:47 - Anne (Host) Yes, we always have to look at the economics.  08:49 - Tom You always have to look at the economics of it, and we're still seeing what the full effect of all of these tariffs are going to be on multiple countries, which is going to the majority of economics say, regardless of your political bent, that this is going to create an increase in prices of many, many items. Or some items just may not be available in the United States to be imported and there's some based on reciprocal tariffs. There may be items that the United States manufacturers that cannot be exported.  09:23 - Anne (Host) Well, absolutely, and in terms of hiring, and in terms of hiring. In terms of hiring. I do know that I heard from one of my students, canadian students, that is it favorable now to be an American voicing a Canadian brand at this point?  09:38 Or vice versa, or vice versa, and so we have to think about that or any global brand. So it's interesting to really see. I think a lot of us are so in our studio bubbles that we forget how this impacts the industry, and it impacts our jobs. It can directly affect our jobs, and so it's something that we need to keep our eyes open to. And even though I know a lot of people are like I'm off social media or I you know, it's just sometimes it's difficult for people to watch the news I do think that we have to keep ourselves in touch enough to understand where the trends are going and what things are happening if we want to keep our businesses afloat. And now I guess the next question, Tom, is are we doom-scrolling our voiceover industry at this point? I mean?  10:27 - Tom How do you feel about it? There's a lot of hysteria and confusion and frustration and fear and anger on every social media platform that I have seen. Some of it is a healthy discourse, some of it is fear and hate-mongering. Some of it is a healthy discourse. Some of it is fear and hate mongering. Some of it is a cry for desperation and comfort and commiseration. It's a combination of all of those things.  10:44 So the question is do you shut off all of your social media and go take a walk? Sometimes that's a very, very good idea. But, just exactly to your point, anne, we need to keep an eye on what's going on. Also, all of the social media groups that we're on, they're national or international, so we can keep an eye on what's going on in other parts of the country and other parts of the industry and how it may or may not affect us. Like, for example, I just saw recently a social media post Somebody was talking about well, what happens if there's a recession? How is that going to affect the voiceover industry? Now, I don't know if you remember, but 2008, 2009, the great recession oh, I do. I did not remember and I went back and I looked at my numbers. I didn't notice any effect, noticeable effect, on it.  11:29 When COVID hit March of 2020, there was a noticeable dip, but then April it went right back up and 2020 was a pretty good year for me. But paying attention to things like that and you know, instead of being in your own little bubble, about being terrified about everything, but when you're actually doing your own research off of social media and looking for intelligent discourse on social media to find actual facts, and listening to people who've been around the block a few times, like you or I, who was like, yeah, no, the recession was not a big deal and oh, yeah, covid, things bounced back really quickly and, like I said, last year's, well, the strikes, the SAG-AFTRA strikes, the interactive strike, which is still ongoing, unfortunately, but hopefully they'll be able to fight for their rights and protect all of us. When it comes to AI and other bad practices, the voiceover industry seems to be relatively pliant and relatively resilient. Yes, because, no matter what, people are still trying to sell things. People are still trying to buy things.  12:28 I love that. You said that People still need to teach things. You know what I mean.  12:31 - Anne (Host) I mean, we are a company ourselves, right, we want to stay afloat.  12:34 We're right now looking at and if you aren't, you need to be right Always, you need to be looking at how are you going to stay afloat, how is your business going to continue to show progress, move forward, be successful?  12:46 And it just basically comes down to we're evolving. We're evolving with the times, right, and I think that I agree with you wholeheartedly that I don't think there's going to be any less of a demand for voiceover because, as you mentioned, companies still want to exist, they still want to sell a product, and so part of that sell is including a voice to speak the brand and to communicate that sell to others. And so I don't think it's doom scrolling, but I do believe that we need to educate ourselves on what the trends are, and not just the trends on the style of voiceover, although I think that it's good to understand, like, what's out there? How is that message being told? I always maintain that the best performance trend, the best voiceover performance trend to follow, is just be an actor, be a damn actor, right, because if you're an actor, you evolve, you can evolve and change, just like you need to do with your business.  13:44 And I think that you kind of touched on synthetic voices and AI Again, if we were to talk about how do you feel that that's affecting the industry these days? I can tell you, in my opinion, right now, I think that things are working themselves out, hopefully on a more positive note, and I don't think that the fascination is there for me. I'm not seeing the fascination there with voiceover jobs being stolen by AI. I believe that more of the focus needs to be on let's just protect our voices so that they're not being used without our permission and being developed into a synthetic voice. Or, if we have a synthetic voice, make sure that we're getting compensated for it. What are your thoughts?  14:22 - Tom  I generally agree, because everyone who decided that AI is the devil and decided not to get involved in any level of critical thinking or investigating about it, they have not changed their minds. The people that jumped in with both feet are probably still jumping in with both feet. What I think to your point you're saying is that everybody that wanted to give it a sniff, that wanted to try it out, test the water, has done it not just once, but maybe twice, because ChatGPT rolled out November 2022 and now we're in mid 2025. So I think there's been like At least from my observation, there's been like two rounds of companies giving AI a try. The first one was just to, oh, let's see what this is all about.  15:03 And then some were like, oh, this is great, this is perfect. Others are like, no, this is awful. And then there's others who, a year or so later, is like you know what? It's probably gotten two years better. Let's give it another try. And then same thing happens. Some thought, oh, okay, it's good enough now, or it's not good enough now, or making whatever decision. But yeah, the fervor from the consumer end, I think, has settled.  15:26 I think so too, and I think the terror from the voiceover end I think for the most part is settled. There's still questions about it.  15:33 - Anne (Host) Sure, and we've got great organizations fighting for us as well. Nava has been doing a phenomenal job in that regard, and if you're a business and you're not using AI in some capacity to manage your data, you're missing out. You're missing out on the boat, and we did talk about that previously in an episode, tom, you and I. It's just getting better and better at that, but it's not necessarily getting better at speaking your voice synthetically. But data management, I think, is just leaps and bounds and it's integrated in a lot of the products we're using and you may not even know it. It's kind of like.  16:07 I think I mentioned this to you before Back in the day I installed voice over IP phone systems when they first came out and people just said oh my God, they sucked, They'll never work, They'll never last, and ultimately, that's what we do today. I mean, it's all voice over IP. Everything that we're doing is we're communicating, Our phone lines are over data internet lines and it's just that's what's happening. Now. We have voice over IP and we don't even know it. It's seamless. So I believe that the AI data management is being built in seamlessly into things that we use like Google or I think you're using Google Workspace.  16:36 - Tom  I am using Google Workspace and Google Gemini is my favorite AI, google Gemini.  16:39 - Anne (Host) I have ChatGPT. I have a couple other products that do some automated things for me that are under the ChatGPT, and I continually look for tools that can help me to run my business more efficiently. So I don't think that in the voice realm of things. Oh my God. I just said a company.  16:54 - Tom  Naughty, naughty.  16:54 - Anne (Host) I didn't even know In the voiceover world. I don't know if synthetic voices are quite the terror and the scare that they were in the last couple of years.  17:03 - Tom  I still think the same thing is exactly what you and Andy said on that wonderful narratorlife interview that you did, which you said garbage in, garbage out. Good actors are going to make good AIs, bad actors are going to make bad AI are going to make bad AI. And the relevance gap I still think is growing, of people that are lacking in talent or training storytelling training, that are trying to enter the world of voiceover, are just not going to be able to get in. So I think that still stands.  17:28 - Anne (Host) And everybody I talk to we're talking about. Like anything today, if you want to capture someone's attention, right, marketing, wise, right it's all about authenticity. It's all about authenticity. It's all about give the human aspect to you. Even when I write a newsletter, it's like give somebody that vulnerable part of yourself that talks directly to them and doesn't just try to sell them or doesn't just try to, like, promote things. And give that authenticity. And I really believe that, as humans, that's who we are and that's what we have and that is just our strength. And when we are performing voiceover and we are voice actors, I think the more that we can be authentic in whatever genre we are voicing, the better off we are and the more successful we will be.  18:08 - Tom I agree. I had another thought about. Something that we were talking about a little earlier is that unemployment seems to be rising because of all of these federal layoffs.  18:19 Layoffs, yeah, and then as a result of tariffs.  18:20 if prices are going up, they have to maintain profit margins, so sometimes they need to cut labor. So what's been interesting in voiceover is that, as a result of AI, there has been less of the entry-level, lowest budget voiceover work, which means there's less opportunities for people who are entering the voiceover industry, and that may mean some people are not able to have a sustainable voiceover business model, so they're leaving the voiceover industry. However, if employment does keep going up the way that it does, does that mean more people are going to come back who want?  18:55 - Anne (Host) to give voiceover a shot. Yeah, exactly that was my experience when COVID happened.  19:01 And people, how many of my coaching business, I mean I had like tripled business with people who were using the time to learn voiceover and to get into voiceover and to utilize their voice for something good. I mean, I think that's still like. The desire of most people that get into this industry is they want to use their voice to do something good and, of course, make some money. Sure, that's always a key element to be successful in voiceover business. But what other aspects, tom, have we not covered here in this few months, now that we're in 2025? We've talked about, I mean, really, how dependent our industry is on the economy and the message that is out there, the brand that is out there.  19:50 - Tom Right. Yeah, it's dependent and it's independent at the same time, when we are getting into what seems to be a very interesting year on a sociological, social, cultural, political, economic level, what can we as voice actors do? So what should us bosses do? It's the same answer all the time, anne Right.  20:11 - Anne (Host) What do we do? Keep training, keep learning.  20:13 - Tom Keep growing, keep marketing, keep marketing. Keep following industry trends. Continue to have conversations with fellow voice actors. Continue to have conversations with your current and potential clients. Pay attention to what's going on on social media, but don't get sucked in by it. But pay attention, learn, grow, adapt, evolve and educate Educate yourself and educate each other.  20:33 - Anne (Host) Educate, adapt, evolve. I love that. Educate, adapt, evolve. I think that really should be our mantra for this year Educate, adapt, evolve and I think everything will be absolutely fine in this voiceover industry. And also just one thing that I want to make mention is that during those lean times where you may not be finding work or work slows down, it's always important to kind of go back and listen to other voiceover podcast episodes that I've had with Tom, of course, about your business and how to build your business and be successful, as well, as I've had a money series with Daniel Fambul, which talks about the fact that if times are lean for me or I'm considering investing more in my business, which would mean maybe I'm going to get coaching, maybe I'm going to get a new demo, maybe I'm going to get a new website which, by the way, I've done all those things and I've had to make a lot of investments this year, and so it's important to have the mindset right, the mindset of being willing to invest.  21:32 I think that's important being willing to invest in this career If you love this career and this is what you want to do and you want to grow, having the mindset of being willing to invest, and I, right now, in my own business, I've transitioned over to a new website, I'm doing a lot of new things that are on the scary side of things for me. I mean, I think if you're not scared every day, you're not taking a risk every day. And, by the way, this risk is not just a risk performance-wise or strategy-wise, it is a risk financially-wise, because I'm investing in a part of my business that I want to grow, and so it's not easy and it's scary, but it's something that I believe every boss needs to really take a look at and be willing to take a little bit of a risk. Take a look at and be willing to take a little bit of a risk, and I'm thankful that and, tom, we've talked about this I'm thankful that I have a little bit of a nest egg that I can make these investments yeah.  22:26 - Tom So my new mantra will now be if you're not taking risks, you're not trying, and if you're not scared you're not trying hard enough.  22:33 - Anne (Host) Oh, I like that a lot. Yeah, Tom. So I admit that I'm scared. Are you scared? Are you scared every?  22:39 - Tom  day. Am I conscious? Yes, of course I'm scared.  22:41 - Anne (Host) Yeah, what things scare you? I'm just curious what things scare you in running your business?  22:46 - Tom Well, I mean just as a basic normal, semi-normal neurotic human. I still have my imposter syndrome. I hear you I still have my FOMO.  22:55 I'm still afraid that 30 years later, that clients are just going to be like well we don't just like his face anymore and they're just not going to book me and they come back. They all come back, as in you know, most of them come back for all good reasons and other people don't come back for whatever other reason. 99% of the time has absolutely nothing to do with me. But my biggest fear is the fear of being irrelevant, and I've had a couple of times in my voiceover career where I, as a result of very poor business decision-making, I made myself less relevant.  23:28 The jumping off of Voice123 in 2013 and then being off it for seven years made me less relevant as a voice actor because I wasn't paying attention to what was going on in the industry. I was up my own you-know-what about it and making decisions based on fear, ego, insecurity and arrogance and ignorance.  23:47 - Anne (Host) Oh, my God, I just love that. You just you were so authentic with that. That's really wonderful. I mean, I love that you're sharing that with us because that's something that I think everybody can take and really learn from myself included taking these risks that have not always worked out and, yeah, a lot of it is because I was stubborn. I have a little bit of a stubborn streak. I'll admit to you that mine would be stubborn in feeling like what I was doing was the way and there was not another way to do.  24:18 It was the way and there was not another way to do it. And that stubbornness and not allowing myself to open my eyes, especially when because I hire a team of people right, and trying to do everything myself, thinking I was the only person that could do it, being that kind of a person, that control freak which I am that held me back. It was scary to me. I was scared that if I didn't control it myself, that I would lose control and that I wouldn't be able to grow the business. But quite the opposite happened. After all, that, when I allowed myself to be open to collaborating and working with others and it's one of the reasons why I love to collaborate with you, tom, because there's so much power in collaboration together and that is one of the basis is for when you want to run a strong business. I'll never forget Gary Vaynerchuk said hire people who are better than you to do those things and don't be afraid of that. Don't be scared of that and treat them right, because that's going to help you all grow and move forward.  25:07 - Tom Absolutely Surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you is another mantra that I've heard over the years, and it's really really true.  25:14 - Anne (Host) Yeah, yeah, I love it, tom. Thank you so much. I think that last nugget was the best of all out of this episode. I really love talking with you in these podcasts, so thanks again. I'm going to give a great big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You too can connect and network like real bosses. You can find out more at IPDTL.com. Bosses have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.  25:41 - Speaker 2 (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.   

Tom MacWright is a prolific contributor in the geospatial open source community. He made geojson.io, Mapbox Studio, and was the lead developer on the OpenStreetMap editor. He's currently on the team at Val Town. In 2021 he bootstrapped a solo business and created the Placemark mapping application. He acquired customers and found steady growth but after spending two years on the project he decided it was financially unsustainable. He open sourced the code and shut down the business. In this interview Tom speaks candidly about why geospatial is difficult, chasing technical rabbit holes, the mental impact of bootstrapping, and his struggles to grow a customer base. If you're interested in geospatial or the good and bad of running a solo business I think you'll enjoy this conversation with Tom. Related Links Tom's blog Placemark Play Placemark GitHub Placemark archive geojson.io Valtown Datawrapper (Visualization tool) Geospatial Companies mentioned Mapbox ArcGIS QGIS Carto -- Transcript You can help correct transcripts on GitHub. [00:00:00] Introduction Jeremy: Today I'm talking to Tom MacWright. He worked at Mapbox as a, a very early employee. He's had a lot of experience in the geospatial community, the open source community. One of his most recent projects was a mapping project called Placemark he started and ran on his own. So I wanted to talk to Tom about his experience going solo and, eventually having to, shut that down. Tom, thanks for agreeing to chat today. Tom: Yeah, thanks for having me. [00:00:32] Tools and Open Source at Mapbox Jeremy: So maybe to give everyone some context on, what your background was before you started Placemark. Um, let's talk a little bit about your experience at, at Mapbox. What did you work on there and, and what would you say are like the big things you learned from that experience? Tom: Yeah, so if you include the time that I was at Development Seed, which essentially turned into Mapbox, I kind of signed the paper to get fired from Development Seed and hired at Mapbox within the same 20 seconds. Uh, I was there for eight and a half years. so it was a lifetime in tech years. and the company really evolved from, uh, working for Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and the World Bank and doing these small, little like micro websites to the point at which I left it. It had. Raised a lot of money, had a lot of employees. I think it was 350 or so when I left. and yeah, just expanded into a lot of different, uh, try trying to own more and more of the mapping stack. but yeah, I was kind of really focused on the creative and tooling side of it. that's kind of where I see a lot of the, the fun and programming is making these tools where, uh, they can give people the same kind of fun like interaction loop that programming has where you, you know, you do a little bit of math and you see the result and you're able to just play with, uh, what you're working on, letting people have that in other domains. so it was really cool to figure out how to get A map design tool where somebody changes the background color and it just automatically changes that in your browser. and it covered like data editing. It covered, um, map styling and we did, uh, three different versions of that tool over the years. and then Mapbox is also a company that was, it came from, kind of people who are working on the Howard Dean campaign. And so it was pretty ideological and part of the ideology was being pretty hardcore about open source. we hired a lot of people who were working on open source projects before and basically just paid them to work on the open source projects, uh, for their whole time there. And during my time there, I just tried to make as much of my work, uh, open as possible, which was, you know, at the time it was, it was pretty great. I think in the long term it's been, o open source has changed a lot. but during the time that we were there, we both kind of, helped things like leaflet and mapnik and openstreetmap, uh, but also made like some larger contributions to the open source world. yeah, that, that's kind of like the, the internal company facing side. And also like what I try to create as like a more of a, uh, enduring work. I think the open source stuff will hopefully have more of a, a long term, uh, benefit. [00:03:40] How open source has changed (value capture by large companies) Jeremy: When I was working on a project that needed offline maps, um, we couldn't use Google Maps or any of the, the other publicly available, cloud APIs. So yeah, we actually used a, a tool, called Tile Mill that I, I hadn't known that you'd worked on, but recently found out you did. So that actually let us pull in OpenStreetMap data and then use this style, uh, language called carto to, to basically let us choose what the colors would be and how the different, uh, the roads and the buildings would look. What's kind of interesting to me is that it being open source really let us, um, build something we otherwise wouldn't have been able to do. But like, at the same time, we also didn't pay Mapbox any money. (laughs) So I'm, I'm kind of curious, like, if it's changed, like what the thinking was in terms of, you know, we pay for people to build all these things. We make it open source. but then people may just not ever pay us, you know, for all these things we did. Tom: Yeah. Yeah. I think that the main thing that's changed since the era of tilemill is, the dominance of cloud platforms. Like back then, I think, uh, Mapbox was still using, we were using like a little bit of AWS but people were still just on like VPSs and, uh, configuring things in cPanel and sometimes even running their own servers. And the, the danger of people using the product for free was such a small thing for us. especially when tile Mill was also funded by the Knight Foundation, so, you know, that at least paid half of my salary for, or, well, sorry, probably, yeah, maybe half of my salary for the first year that I was there and half of three other people's salaries. but that, yeah, so like when we built Tile Mill, a few companies have really like built on those same tools. Uh, there's a company called Carto coincidentally, they had the same name as Carto CSS, and they built on a lot of the same stack they built on mapnik. Um, and it was, was... I mean, I'm not gonna say that it was all like, you know, sunshine and roses, but it was never a thing that we talked about in terms of like this being a brutal competition between us and these other startups. Mapbox eventually closed source some stuff. they made it a source available license. and eventually Mapbox Studio was a closed source product. Um, and that was actually a decision that I advocated for. And that's mostly just because at one point, Esri, Microsoft, Amazon, all had whitelisted versions of Mapbox code, which, uh, hurts a little bit on a personal level and also makes it pretty hard to think about. working almost like it. You don't want to go to your scrappy open source company and do unpaid labor for Amazon. Uh, you know, Bezos can afford to pay for the labor himself. that's just kind of my personal, uh, that I'm obviously, I haven't worked there in a long time, so I'm not speaking for the company, but that's kind of how it felt like. and it yeah, kind of changed the arithmetic of open source in this way that. It made it less fun and, more risky, um, for people I think. [00:07:11] Don't worry about the small free users Jeremy: Yeah. So it sounds like the thinking was if someone on a small team or an individual, they took the open source software and they used it for their own projects, that was fine. Like you expected that and didn't worry about it. It's more that when these really large organizations like a, a Microsoft comes in and, just like you said, white labels the software, and doesn't really contribute significantly back. That's, that's when it, the, the thinking sort of shifted. Tom: Yeah, like a lot of the people who can't pay full price in USD to use your product are great users and they're doing cool stuff. Like when I was working on Placemark and when I was like selling. The theme for my blog, I would get emails from like some kid in India and it's like, you know, you're selling this for a hundred dollars, which is a ton of money. And like, you know, why, why should I care? Why shouldn't I like, just send them the zip file for free? it's like nothing to me and a lot to them. and mapping tools are really, really expensive. So the fact that Mapbox was able to create a free alternative when, you know, ArcGIS was $500 a month sometimes, um, depending on your license, obviously. That's, that's good. You're always gonna find a way for, like, your salespeople are gonna find a way to charge the big companies a lot of money. They're great at that. Um, and that's what matters really for your, for the revenue. [00:08:44] ESRI to Google Maps with little in-between Jeremy: That's a a good point too about like the, my impression of the, the mapping space, and maybe this has changed more recently, but you had the, probably the biggest player Esri, who's selling things at enterprise prices and then there were, or there are like a few open source options. but they feel like the, the barrier to entry feels a little high. And so, and then I guess you have stuff like Google Maps, right? That's, um, that's very accessible, but it's pretty limited, so. There's this big gap, it feels like right between the, the Esri and the, the Google Maps and open source. It's, it's sort of like, there's almost like there's no sweet spot. guess May, maybe it's just because people's uses are so different, but I'm, I'm not sure, um, what makes maps so unique in that way Tom: Yeah, I have come to understand what Esri and QGIS do as like an extension of what CAD is like. And if you've used CAD software recently, it's just as crazy and as expensive and as powerful. and it's really hard to capture like the people who are motivated enough to make a map but don't want to go down the whole rabbit hole. I think that was one of the hardest things about Placemark was trying to be in the middle of those things and half of the people were mystified by the complexity and half the people wanted more complexity. Uh, and I just couldn't figure out how to get it to the right in between spot. [00:10:25] Placemark and its origins in geojson.io Jeremy: Yeah. So let's, let's talk a little bit about Placemark then, in terms of from its start. What was your, your goal with Placemark and, and what was the product itself? Tom: So the seed of the idea for Placemark, uh, is this website called geojson.io, uh, which is still around. And, Chris Fong (correction -- Whong) at, at Mapbox is still, uh, developing it. And that had become pretty useful for a lot of people who I knew in the industry who were in this position of managing geospatial data but not wanting to boot up ArcGIS uh, geojson.io is based on, I just tweeted, I was like, why? Why is there not a thing where you can edit data on a map and have a GeoJSON representation and just go Back and forth between the two really easily. and it started with that, and then it kind of grew to be a little bit more powerful. And then it was just a tool that was useful for everyone. And my theory was just that I wanted that to be more useful. And I knew just like anything else that you build and you work on for a long time, you know exactly how it could be so much better. And, uh, all the things that you would do better if you did it again. And I was, uh, you know, hoping that there was something where like if you make that more powerful and you make it something that's like so essential that somebody's using every day, then maybe there's some some value in that. And so Placemark kind of started as being like, oh, this is the thing where if you're tasking a satellite and you need a bounding box on a specific city, this is the easiest way to do that. Um, and it grew a little bit into being like a tool for collaborating because people were collaborating on it. And I thought that that would be, you know, an interesting thing to support. but yeah, I think it, it like tried to be in that middle of like, not exactly Google my Maps and certainly a lot, uh, simpler than, uh, QGIS or ArcGIS Jeremy: something I noticed, so I've actually used geojson.io as well when I was first learning how to put stuff on a map and learning that GeoJSON was a format that a lot of things were using, it was actually really helpful to, to be able to draw, uh, polygons and see, okay, this is how the JSO looks and all that stuff. And it was. Like just very simple. I think there's something like very powerful about, websites or applications like that where it, it does this one thing and when you go there, you're like, oh, okay, I, I, I know what I'm doing and it's, it's, uh, you know, it's gonna help me do the, this very specific thing I'm trying to do. [00:13:16] Placemark use cases (Farming, Transportation, Interior mapping, Satellite viewsheds) Jeremy: I think with Placemark, so, one question I would have is, you gave an example of, uh, someone, I think you said for a satellite, they're, are they drawing the, the area? What, what was the area specifically for? Tom: the area of interest, the area where they want the, uh, to point the camera. Jeremy: so yeah, with, with Placemark, I mean, were there, what were some of the specific customers or use cases you had in mind? 'cause that's, that's something about. Um, placemark as a product I noticed was it's sort of like, here's this thing where you can draw polygons put markers and there's all these like things you can do, but I think unless you already have the specific use case, it's not super clear, who uses it for what. So maybe you could give some examples of what you had in mind. Tom: I didn't have much in mind, but I can tell you what people, what some people used it for. so some of the more interesting uses of it, a bunch of, uh, farming oriented use cases, uh, especially like indoor and small scale farming. Um, there were some people who, uh, essentially had a bunch of flower farms and had polygons on the map, and they wanted to, uh, mark the ones that had mites or needed to be watered, other things that could spread in a geometric way. And so it's pretty important to have that geospatial component to it. and then a few places were using it for basically transportation planning. Um, so drawing out routes of where buses would go, uh, in Luxembourg. And, then there was also a little bit of like, kind of interesting, planning of what to buy more or less. Uh, so something of like, do we want to buy this tract of land or do we wanna buy this tract of land or do we wanna buy access to this one high speed internet cable or this other high speed internet cable? and yeah, a lot of those things were kind of like emergent use cases. Um, there's a lot of people who were doing either architecture or internal or in interior mapping essentially. Jeremy: Interior, you mean, inside of a building Tom: yeah. yeah. Jeremy: Hmm. Okay. Tom: Which I don't think it was the best tool for. Uh, but you know, people used it for that. Jeremy: Interesting. Yeah. I guess, would people normally use some kind of a CAD tool for that, or Tom: Yeah. Uh, there's CAD tools and there are a few, uh, companies that do just, there's a company that just does interior maps especially of airports, and that's their whole business model. Um, but it's, it's kind of an interesting, uh, problem because most CAD architecture work is done with like a local coordinate system, and you have like very good resolution of everything, and then you eventually place it in geo geospatial space. Uh, but if you do it all in latitude and longitude, you know, you're, you're moving a door and it's moving the 10th or 12th decimal point, and eventually you have some precision problems. Jeremy: So it's almost like if you start with latitude and longitude, it's hard to go the other way. Right? you have to start more specific and then you can move it into the, the geospatial, uh, area. Tom: Yeah. Uh, that's kind of why we have local projections for towns is that you can do a lot of work just in that local projection. And the numbers are kind of small 'cause your town's small, relatively. Jeremy: yeah, those are kind of interesting. So it sounds like just anytime somebody wants to, like you gave the example of transportation planning or you want to visually see where things are, like your crops or things like that, and that, that kind of makes sense. I mean, I think if you just think about paper maps, if somebody wants to sketch something out and, and sort of track the layout of something, this could serve the same purpose but be editable. and like you said, I think it's also. Collaborative so you can have multiple people editing the same, um, map. that makes sense. I think something that I believe I saw on your website is you said though that it was, it's like an editing tool, but it's not necessarily a visualization tool. Uh, I'm kind of curious what you, what you meant by that. [00:17:39] An editing tool that allows you to export data not a visualization tool Tom: Yeah, I, when you say a map, I think there's, people can interpret that as everything from raw data to satellite imagery and raster data. and then a lot of it is like, can I use this to make a choropleth map of the voter turnout in our, in my country? and that placemark did a little bit, but I think that it was, it was never going to be the, the thing that it did super well. and so, yeah, and also like the, the two things kind of, don't mesh all that well. Like if you have a scale point map and you have that kind of visualization of it and then you're editing the points at the same time and you're dragging around these like gigantic points because this point means a lot of population, it just doesn't really make that much sense. There are probably ways to square that circle and have different views, but, uh, I felt like for visualizations, I mean partly I just think data wrapper is kind of great and uh, I had already worked for observable at that point, which is also, which I think also does like great visualization work. Jeremy: Would that be the case of somebody could make a map inside a placemark and then they would take the GeoJSON and then import that into another visualization tool? Is that what you were kind of imagining people would do? Tom: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Jeremy: And I could see from the customer's perspective, a lot of them, they may have that end, uh, visualization in mind. So they might look for a tool that kind of just does both. Right. Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Certain people definitely, wanted that. And yeah, it was an interesting direction to go down. I think that market was going to be a lot different than the people who wanted to manage and edit data. And also, I, one thing that I had in mind a lot, uh, was if Placemark didn't work out, how much would people be burned? and I think if I, if I built it in a way that like everyone was heavily relying on the API and embeds, people would be suffer a lot more, if I eventually had to shut it down. every API that you release is really a, a long-term commitment. And instead for me, like guilt wise, having a product where you can easily export everything that you ever did in any format that you want was like the least lock in, kind of. Jeremy: Yeah. And I imagine the, the scope of the project too, you're making it much smaller if you, if you stick to that editing experience and not try to do everything. Tom: Yeah. Yeah. I, the scope was already pretty big. as you can tell from the open source project, it's, it's bigger than I wish it was. the whole time I was really hoping that I could figure out some niche that was much more compact. there's, I forget the name, but there's somebody who has a, an application that's very similar to Placemark in. Technical terms, but is just a hundred percent focused on planning septic systems. And I'm just like, if I just did this just for septic systems, like would that be a much, would that be 10,000 lines of code instead of 40,000 lines of code? And it would be able to perfectly serve those customers. but you know, that I didn't do enough experimentation to figure that out. Um, I, that's, I think one thing that I wish I had done a lot more was, pivot and do experiments. Jeremy: that septic example, do you know if it's a, a business in and of itself where it can actually support one person or a staff of people? Or is it, is that market just too small? Tom: I think it's still a solo bootstrapped project. yeah. And it's, it's so hard to tell whether a company's doing well or not. I could ask the person over DM. [00:21:58] Built the base technology before going public Jeremy: So when you were first starting. placemark. You were, you were doing it as a solo, developer. A solo entrepreneur, reallyyou worked on it for quite a while, I think before you announced, right? Like maybe a year or so? Tom: Yeah, yeah. Almost, almost a year, I think, maybe, maybe 10 months in the dark. Jeremy: I think that there's, there was a lot of overlap between the different directions that I would eventually go in and. So just building a collaborative editor that can edit map data fairly quickly and checks all the boxes of being able to import and export things, um, that is, was a lot of work. and I mean also I, I was, uh, freelancing during part of it, so it wasn't a hundred percent of my time. Tom: But that, that core, I think even now if I were to build something similar, I would probably still use that work. because that, whether you're doing the septic planning application or you're doing a general purpose kind of map editor or some kind of social application, a lot of that stuff will be in common. Um, and so I wanted to really get, like, to figure out that problem space and get a few solutions that I could live with. Jeremy: The base. libraries or technologies you were gonna pick to get the map and have the collaborative aspect. Those are all things you wanted to get settled first. And then you figured, okay, once I have this base, then I can go find the, you know, the, the, the customers or, or find the specifics of what I'm gonna build. Tom: Yeah, exactly. Jeremy: I I think you had said that going forward when you're gonna work on another project, you would probably still start the same way. [00:23:51] Geospatial is a tough industry, no public companies Tom: if I was working on a project in the geospatial space, I would probably heavily reference the work that I already did here. but I don't know if I'll go back to, to maps again. It's a tough industry. Jeremy: Is it because of the, the customer base? Is it because like people don't really understand the market in terms of who actually needs the maps? I'm kind of curious what you feel makes it tough. Tom: I think, well there are no, there are no public mapping companies. Esri is I think one of the 10 largest private companies in the us. but it's not like any of these geospatial companies have ever been like a pure play. And I think that makes it hard. I think maps are just, they're kind of like fonts in a way in which they are this. Very deep well of complexity, which is absolutely fascinating. If you're in it, it's enough fun and engineering to spend an entire career just working on that stuff. And then once you're out of it, you talk to somebody and you're just like, oh, I work on this thing. And they're like, oh, that you Google maps. Um, or, you know, I work at a font type like a, you know, a type factory and it's like, oh, do you make, uh, you know, courier in, uh, word. It's really infrastructure, uh, that we mostly take for granted, which is, that's, that means it's good in some ways. but at the same time, I, it's hard to really find a niche in which the mapping component is that, that is that useful. A lot of the companies that are kind of mapping companies. Like, I think you could say that like Strava and Palantir are kind of geospatial companies, both of them. but Strava is a fitness company and Palantir is a military company. so if you're, uh, a mapping expert, you kind of have to figure out what, how it ties into the real world, how it ties into the business world and revenue. And then maps might be 50% of the solution or 75% of the solution, but it's probably not going to be, this is the company that makes mapping software. Jeremy: Yeah, it's more like, I have this product that I'm gonna sell and it happens to have a map as a part of it. versus I'm going to sell you, tools that, uh, you know, help you make your own map. That seems like a, a harder, harder sell. Tom: yeah. And especially pro tools like the. The idea of people being both invested in terms of paying and invested in terms of wanting to learn the tool. That's, uh, that's a lot to ask out of people. [00:26:49] Knowing the market is tough but going for it anyways Jeremy: I think the things we had just talked about, about mapping being a tough industry and about there being like the low end is taken care of by Google, the high end is taken care of by Esri with ArcGIS. Uh, I think you mentioned in a blog post that when you started Placemark you, you, you knew all this from the start. So I'm kind of curious, like, knowing that, what made you decide like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go for it and, you know, do it anyways. Tom: uh, I, well, I think that having seen, I, like I am a co-founder of val.town now, and every company that I've worked for, I've been pretty early enough to see how the sausage is made and the sausage is made with chaos. Like every company doesn't know what it's doing and is in an impossible fight against some Goliath figure. And the product that succeeds, if it ever does succeed, is something that you did not think of two or three years in advance. so I looked at this, I looked at the odds, and I was like, oh, these are the typical odds, you know, maybe someday I'll see something where it's, uh, it's an obvious open blue water market opportunity. But I think for the, for the most part, I was expecting to grind. Uh, you know, like even, even if, uh, the odds were worse, I probably would've still done it. I think I, I learned a lot. I should have done a lot more marketing and business and, but I have, I have no regrets about, you know, taking, taking a one try at solving a very hard to solve problem. Jeremy: Yeah, that's a good point in that the, the odds, like you said, are already stacked against you. but sometimes you just gotta try it and see how it goes, Tom: Yeah. And I had the, like I was at a time where I was very aware of how my life was set up. I was like, I could do a startup right now and kind of burn money for a little while and have enough time to work on it, and I would not be abandoning an infant child or, you know, like all of the things that, all the life responsibilities that I will have in the near future. Um. So, you know, uh, the, the time was then, I guess, [00:29:23] Being a solo developer Jeremy: And comparing it to your time at Mapbox and the other startups and, and I suppose now at val.town, when you were working on Placemark, you're the sole developer, you're in charge of everything. how did that feel? Did you enjoy that experience or was it more like, I, I really wish I had other people to, you know, to kind of go through this with, Tom: Uh, around the end I started to chat with people who, like might be co-founders and I even entertained some chats with, uh, venture capital people. I am fine with the, the day to day of working on stuff alone of making a lot of decisions. That's what I have done in a lot of companies anyway. when you're building the prototype or turning a prototype into something that can be in production, I think that having, uh, having other people there, It would've been better for my mentality in terms of not feeling like it was my thing. Um, you know, like feeling detached enough from the product to really see its flaws and really be open to, taking more radical shifts in approach. whereas when it's just you, you know, it's like you and the customers and your email inbox and, uh, your conscience and your existential dread. Uh, and you know, it's not like a co-founder or, uh, somebody to work with is gonna solve all of that stuff for you, but, uh, it probably would've been maybe a little bit better. I don't know. but then again, like I've also seen those kinds of relationships blow up a lot. and I wanted to kind of figure out what I was doing before, adding more people, more complexity, more money into the situation. But maybe you, maybe doing that at the beginning is kind of the same, you know, like you, other people are down for the same kind of risk that you are. Jeremy: I'm sure it's always different trade offs. I mean, I, I think there probably is a power to being able to unilaterally say like, Hey, this is, this is what I wanna do, so I'm gonna do it. Tom: Yeah. [00:31:52] Spending too much time on multiplayer without a business case Jeremy: You mentioned how there were certain flaws or things you may not have seen because you were so in it. Looking back, what, what were some of those things? Tom: I think that, uh, probably the, I I don't think that most technical decisions are all that important, um, that it never seems like the thing that means life or death for companies. And, you know, Facebook is still on PHP, they've fought, fixed, the problem with, with money. but I think I got rabbit holed into a few things where if I had like a business co-founder, then they would've grilled me about like, why are we spending? The, the main thing that comes to mind, uh, is real time multiplayer, real time. It was a fascinating problem and I was so ready to think about that all the time and try to solve it. And I think that took up a lot of my time and energy. And in the long term, most people are not editing a map. At the same time, seeing the cursors move around is a really fun party trick, and it's great for marketing, but I think that if I were to take a real look at that, that was, that was a mistake. Especially when the trade off was things that actually mattered. Like the amount of time, the amount, the amount of data that the, that could be handled at. At the same time, I could have figured out ways to upload a one gigabyte or two gigabyte or three gigabyte shape file and for it to just work in that same time, whereas real time made it harder to solve that problem, which was a lot closer to what, Paying customers cared about and where people's expectations were? Jeremy: When you were working on this realtime collaborative functionality, was this before the product was public? Was this something you, built from the start? Tom: Yeah. I built the whole thing without it and then added it in. Not as like a rewrite, but like as a, as a big change to a lot of stuff. Jeremy: Yeah, I, I could totally see how that could happen because you are trying to envision people using this product, and you think of something like Google Docs, right? It's very powerful to be typing in a document and see the other cursors and, um, see other people typing. So, I could see how you, you would make that leap and say like, oh, the map should, should do that too. Yeah. [00:34:29] Financial pressures of bootstrapping, high COL, and healthcare Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, you know, Figma is very cool. Like the, it's, it's amazing. It's an amazing thing. But the Figma was in the dark for way longer than I was, and uh, Evan is a lot smarter than I was. Jeremy: He probably had a big bag of money too. Right. Tom: Yeah. Jeremy: I, I don't actually know the history of Figma, but I'm assuming it's, um, it's VC funded, right? Tom: Uh, yeah, they're, they're kind of famous for just having, I don't think they raised that much in the beginning, but they just didn't hire very much and it was just like the two co-founders, or two or three people and they just kept building for long time. I feel like it's like well over three years. Jeremy: Oh wow. Okay. I think like in your case, I, I saw a comment from you where you were saying, this was your sole source of income and you gotta pay for your health insurance, and so you have no outside investments. So, the pressures are, are very different I think. Tom: Yeah. Yeah. And that's really something to on, to appreciate about venture capital. It gives you the. Slack in your, in your budget to make some mistakes and not freak out about it. and sadly, the rent is not going down anytime soon in, in Brooklyn, and the health insurance is not going down anytime soon. I think it's, it's kind of brutal to like leave a job and then realize that like, you know, to, to be admitted to a hospital, you have to pay $500 a month. Jeremy: I'm, I'm sure that was like, shocking, right? The first time you had to pay for it yourself. Tom: Yeah. And it's not even good. Uh, we need to fix this like that. If there's anything that we could do to fix entrepreneurship in this country, it's just like, make it possible to do this without already being wealthy. Um, it was, it was a constant stress. [00:36:29] Growth and customers Jeremy: As you worked on it, and maybe especially as you, after you had shipped, was there a period where. You know, things were going really well in terms of customers and you felt like, okay, this is really gonna work. Tom: I was, so, like, I basically started out by dropping, I think $5,000 in the business bank account. And I was like, if I break even soon, then I'll be happy. And I broke even in the first month. And that was amazing. I mean, the costs were low and everything, but I was really happy to just be at that point and that like, it never went down. I think that probably somebody with more, uh, determination would've kept going after, after I had stopped. but yeah, like, and also The people who used Placemark, who I actually chatted with, and, uh, all that stuff, they were awesome. I wish that there were more of them. but like a lot of the customers were doing cool stuff. They were supportive. They gave me really informative feedback. Um, and that felt really good. but there was never a point at which like the, uh, the growth scale looked like, oh, we're going to hit a point at which this will be a sustainable business within a year. I think it, according to the growth when I left it, it would've been like maybe three years until I would've been, able to pay my rent and health insurance and, live a comfortable life in, in New York. Jeremy: So when you mentioned you broke even that was like the expenses into the business, but not for actually like rent and health insurance and food and all that. Okay. Okay. can you say like roughly how much was coming in or how many customers you had? Tom: Uh, yeah, the revenue initially I think was, uh, 1500 MRR, and eventually it was like 4,000 or so. Jeremy: And the growth was pretty steady. [00:38:37] Bootstrapping vs fundraising Tom: Um, so yeah, I mean, the numbers where you're just like, maybe I could have kept going. but it's, the other weird thing about VCs is just that I think I have this rich understanding of like, if you're, if you're running a business that will be stressful, but be able to pay your bills and you're in control of it, versus running a startup where you might make life changing money and then not have to run a business again. It's like the latter is kind of better. Uh, if stress affects you a lot, and if you're not really wedded to being super independent. so yeah, I don't know between the two ways of like living your life, I, I have some appreciation for, for both. doing what Placemark entailed if I was living cheaply in a, in a cheap city and it didn't stress me out all the time, would've been a pretty good deal. Um, but doing it in Brooklyn with all the stress was not it, it wasn't affecting my life in positive ways and I, I wanted to, you know, go see shows at night with my friends and not worry about the servers going down. Jeremy: Even putting the money aside, I think that's being the only person responsible for the app, right? Probably feels like you can't really take a vacation. Right. Tom: Yeah, I did take a vacation during it. Like I went to visit my partner who was in, uh, Germany at the time, and we were like on a boat, uh, between Germany, across the lake to Switzerland, and like the servers went down and I opened up my laptop and fixed the servers. It's just like, that is, it's a sacrifice that people make, but it is hard. Jeremy: There's, there's on call, but usually it's not just you 24 7. Tom: Yeah. If you don't pick up somebody else [00:40:28] Financial stress and framing money spent as an investment Jeremy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess at what point, because I'm trying to think. You started in 2021 and then maybe wrapped up, was it sometime in 2024? Tom: Uh, I took a job in, uh, I, I mean I joined val.town in the early 2023 and then wrapped up in November, 2023. Jeremy: At what point did you really start feeling the, the stress? Like I, I imagine maybe when you first started out, you said you were doing consulting and stuff, so, um, probably things were okay, but once you kind of shifted away from that, is that kind of when the, the, the worries about money started coming in? Tom: Yeah. Um, I think maybe it was like six or eight months, um, in. Just that I felt like I wasn't finding, uh, like a, a way to grow the product without adding lots of complexity to it. and being a solo founder, the idea of succeeding, but having built like this hulking mess of a product felt just as bad as not succeeding. like ideally it would be something that I could really be happy maintaining for the long term. Uh, but I was just seeing like, oh, maybe I could succeed by adding every feature in QGIS and that's just not, not a, not something that I wanted to commit to. but yeah, I don't, I don't know. I've been, uh, do you know, uh, Ramit Sethie he's like a, Jeremy: I don't. Tom: an internet money guy. He's less scummy than the rest of them, but still, I. an internet money guy. Um, but he does adjust a lot of stuff about like, money psychology. And that has made me realize that a lot of what I thought at the time and even think now is kind of a rational, you know, like, I think one of the main things that I would do differently is just set a budget for Placemark. Like if I had just set away, like, you know, enough money to live on for a year and put that in, like the, this is for Placemark bucket, then it would've felt better to me then having it all be ad hoc, month to month, feeling like you're burning money instead of investing money in a thing. but yeah, nobody told me, uh, how to, how to think about it then. Uh, yeah, you only get experience by experiencing it. Jeremy: You're just seeing your, your bank account shrinking and there's this, psychological toll, right? Where you're not, you're not used to that feeling and it, it probably feels like something's wrong, Tom: Yeah, yeah. I'm, I think it, I'm really impressed by people who can say, oh, I invested, uh, you know, 50 or a hundred thousand dollars into this business and was comfortable with that risk. And like, maybe it works out, maybe it doesn't. Maybe you just like threw a lot of money down into that. and the people, I think with the healthy, productive, uh, relationship with it. Do think of it as like, oh, I, I paid for kind of a bet on a risk. and that's, that's what I was doing anyway. You know, like I was paying my rent and my health insurance and spending all my time working on the product instead of paying, uh, freelance work. but if you don't frame it that way, it doesn't feel like an investment. It feels like you're making a risky gamble. Jeremy: Yeah. And I think that makes sense to, to actually, I think, like you were saying, have a separate account or a separate thing set aside where you are like, this is, this is this money for this purpose. And like you said, look at it as an investment, which with regular investments can go down. Tom: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Jeremy: Yeah [00:44:26] In hindsight might have raised money or tried smaller bets Jeremy: Were there, there other things, whether technical or or business wise, that, that if you were to to do it again, you would do differently? Tom: I go back and forth on whether I should have raised venture capital. there are, there's kind of a, an assumption in venture capital that once you're on it, you have to go the whole way. You have to become a billion dollar company, uh, or at least really tell people that you're going to be a billion dollar company and I am not. yeah, I, I don't know. I've seen, I've seen other companies in my space, or like our friends of my current company who are not really targeting that, or ones who were, and then they had somewhere in between the billion dollar and the very small outcome. Uh, and that's a little bit of a point in the favor of accepting a big pile of money from the venture capitalists. I'm also a little bit biased right now because val.town has one investor and he's like the, the best venture capitalist that I have ever met. Big fan. don't quote me on that. If he sacks me in like a year, we'll see. Um, but uh, yeah, there, I, I think that I understand more why people take that approach. or I've understood more why people take like the venture capital but not taking $300 million from SoftBank approach. yeah, and I don't know, I think that, trying a lot of things also seems really appealing. Uh, people who do the same kind of. of Maybe 10 months, but they build four or five different products or three different products instead of just one. I think that, that feels, feels like a good idea to me. Jeremy: And in doing that, would that be more of a, like as a solo entrepreneur or you, you're thinking you would take investment and then say, I'm gonna try all these things with, with your money. Tom: Oh, I've seen both. I, that I, yeah, one friend's company has pivoted like four times between very different ideas and yeah, it, it's one way to do it, but I think in the long term, I would want to do that as a solo developer and try to figure out, you know, something. but yeah, I, I think, uh, so much of it is mindset, that even then if I was working on like three different projects, I think I. My qualifications for something being worth, really adopting and spending all my time doing, you just have to accept, uh, a lot of hits and a lot of misses and a lot of like keeping things alive and finding out how to turn them into something. I am really inspired by my friends who like started around the same time that I did and they're not that much further in terms of revenue and they're like still, still doing it because that is what they want to do in life. and if you develop the whole ecosystem and mindset around it, I think that's somewhere that people can stay and, and be happy. just trying to find, trying to find a company that they own and control and they like. Jeremy: While, while making the the expenses work. Tom: Yeah. Yeah. that's the, that's the hard part, like freelancing on the side also. I probably could have kept that up. I liked my freelance clients. I would probably still work with them as well. but I kind of just wanted the, I wanted the focus, I wanted the motivation of, of being without a net. Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, energy wise, do you think that that would've worked? I mean, I imagine that Placemark took a lot of your time when you were working full time, so you're trying to balance, you know, clients and all your customers and everything you're doing with the software. It just feels like it might be a lot. Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe with different freelance clients. I, I loved my freelance clients because I, after. leaving config. I, I wanted to work on climate change stuff and so I was working for climate change foundations and that is not the way to max out your paycheck. It's the way to feel good about your conscience. And so I still feel great about those projects, but in the future, yeah, I would probably just work for, uh, you know, a hedge fund or something. [00:49:02] Marketing to developers but not potential customers Jeremy: I think something you mentioned in one of your posts is that you maybe could have spent more time or had a different approach with marketing. Maybe you could kind of say what you did do and then what maybe worked and what didn't. Tom: Yeah. So I like my sweet spot is writing documentation and blog posts and technical stuff. And so I did a lot of that and a lot of that like worked in a way that didn't matter. I am at this point, weirdly good at writing stuff that gets on Hacker News. I've written a lot of stuff that's gotten to the top of Hacker News and unfortunately, writing about your technical approach and your geospatial project for handling errors, uh, in your JavaScript code is not really a way to get customers. and I think doing a lot of documentation was also great, but it was also, I think that the, the thing that was missing is the thing that I think Mapbox does fairly well now, in which the homepage really pushes you toward use cases immediately. and I should have been saying to each customer who had anything compelling as a use case, like, let's write an article about you and what you're doing, and here's how you use this in your industry. and that probably would've also been like a good, a good way to figure out which of those verticals was the one that was most worth spending all the time on. yeah. So it, it was, it was a lot of good marketing to nerds. and it could have been better in terms of marketing to actual customers and to people who are making the buying decisions. Jeremy: Yeah. Looking at the, the Placemark blog, I can definitely see how as a developer, a lot of the posts are appealing to me, right? It's about how you worked on a technical challenge or decisions you made, but maybe less so to somebody who they wanna. Draw a map to manage their crops. They're like, I don't care about any of this. Right. Tom: Yeah, like the Mapbox blog used to be, just all that stuff as well. We would write about designing protocol buffer layouts, and it was amazing for hiring and amazing for getting nerds in the door. But now it's just, Toyota is launching with, Mapbox Maps or something like that. And that's, that's what you, you should do if you're trying to sell a product. Jeremy: Yeah. And I think the, the sort of technical aspect, it makes sense too. If you're venture funded and you are looking to hire, right? You wanna build your team and you just want to increase like, the amount of stuff you're building and not worrying so much about, am I gonna have a paycheck next Tom: Yeah. Yeah. I, I just kind of do it because it's fun, which is not the right reason to do it, but, Yeah, I mean, I still write my blog mostly just because it's, it's a fun thing to do, but it's not the best way to, um, to run a business. Jeremy: Yeah. Well, the fun part is important too though. Tom: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's maybe the whole thing. May, that's maybe the most important thing, but you can't do it if you don't do the, the money part. [00:52:35] Most customers came from existing audience Jeremy: Right. So the people who did find you, was it mostly word of mouth from people who did identify with the technical posts, or were there places that surprised you, that people found you? Tom: Uh, a lot of it was people who were familiar with the Mapbox ecosystem or with, with me. and then eventually, yeah, a few of the users came in through, um, through Hacker News, but it was mostly, mostly word of mouth also. The geospatial community is like fairly tight and it's, and it's not too hard to be the person who writes the article about some geospatial challenge that everyone finds. Jeremy: Hmm. Okay. Yeah, that's a good point about like being in that community, especially since you've done so much work in geospatial and in open source that you have this little, this built-in audience, I guess. Tom: yeah. Which I appreciate. It makes me nervous, but yeah. [00:53:43] Val.town marketing to developers Jeremy: Comparing that to something like val.town, how is val.town marketing? How is it finding users? 'cause from what I can tell, it's, it's getting a lot of, uh, a lot of people coming in, right? Tom: Yeah. Uh, well, right now our, our kind of target user, or the user that we think of is a hobbyist, is somebody who's, sometimes a pro developer or somebody, sometimes just somebody who's really interested in the field. And so writing these things that are just about, you know, programming, does super well. Uh, but it, we have exactly the same problem and that that is kind of being revamped as we speak. uh, we hired somebody who actually knows marketing and has a good sense for it. And so a lot of that stuff is shifting to show you what you can do with val.town because it, it suffers from the same problem as well. It's an empty text field in which you can type, type script, code, and it runs. And knowing what you can do with that or what you should do with that is, is hard if you don't have a grasp of TypeScript and web applications. so pretty soon we'll have pages which are like, here's how to connect linear and GitHub with OW Town, or, you know, two nouns connect them, for all of those companies and to do automations and all these like concrete applications. I think that's, you have to do it. You have to figure it out. Jeremy: Just briefly for someone who hasn't heard of val.town, like what, what does it do? Tom: Uh, val.town is a social website, so it has comments and likes and all of that stuff. but it's for writing these little snippets of TypeScript and JavaScript code that run. So a lot of them are websites, some of them are automations, so they receive emails or send emails or connect one service to another. And yeah, it's, it's like combining some aspects of, GitHub or like a code platform, uh, but with the assumption that every time that you save, everything's instantly deployed. Jeremy: So it's maybe a little bit like, um, like a glitch, I guess? Tom: Uh, yeah. Yeah, it takes a lot of experience, a lot of, uh, inspiration from Glitch. Jeremy: And I, I think, like you had mentioned, you enjoy writing the, the technical blog posts and the documentation. And so at least with val.town, your audience is developers versus, the geospatial community who probably largely doesn't care about, TypeScript and the, the different technical decisions there. Tom: Yeah, it, it makes it easier, that's for sure. The customer is, is me. [00:56:30] Shifting from solo to in-person teams Jeremy: Nice. Yeah. Looking at, you know, you, you worked as a, a solo developer for Placemark, and then now you've got a team of, is it like maybe five Tom: Uh, it is seven at the moment. Jeremy: Seven people. Okay. Are you all in person or is it, remote Tom: We all sit around two tables in Brooklyn. It's very nice. Jeremy: So how did that feel? Like shifting from, I'm in, I don't know if you worked from home while you were working on Placemark or if you were in coworking spaces, but you're, you're shifting from I'm like in my own head space doing everything myself to, to, I'm in a room with all these people and we're like working on this thing together. I'm kind of curious like how that felt for you. Tom: Yeah, it's been a big difference. And I think that I was just talking with, um, one, one of our, well an engineer at, at val.town about how everyone kind of had, had been working remote for obvious pandemic world reasons. And this kind of privilege of just being around the same table, if that's what you like is, a huge difference in terms of, I just remember having to. Trick myself into going on a walk around the block because I would get into such a dark mental head space of working on the same project for eight hours straight and skipping lunch. and now there's a little bit more structure. yeah, it's, it's been, it's been a overall, an improvement. Some days I wish that I could go on a run at noon 'cause that's the warmest time of the day. but, uh, overall, like it makes things so much easier. just reading the emotions in people's faces when they're telling you stuff and being able to, uh, not get into discussions that you don't need to get into because you can talk and just like understand each other very quickly. It's, it's very nice. I don't wanna force everyone to do it, you know, but it it for the people who want it, they, they, uh, really enjoy it. Jeremy: Yeah. I think if you have the right set of people, it's definitely more enjoyable. And um, if you don't, maybe not so Tom: Yeah, we haven't hired any, like, extremely loud chewers yet or anything like that, but yeah, maybe my story will change. Jeremy: No, no one microwaving fish. Tom: No, there's, uh, yeah, thankfully the microwave is outside of the office. Jeremy: Do you live close to the office? Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Like most of the team is within a 20 or 30 minute walk of the office and it's very fortunate. I think there's been something of a mass migration to New York. A lot of us didn't live in New York before four years ago, and now all of us do. it's, it's, uh, it's very comfortable to be here. Jeremy: I think that makes, uh, such a big difference. 'cause I think the majority of people, at least within the US you know, you're, you're getting in your car, you're sitting in traffic. and I know people who, during the pandemic, they actually moved further, right? Because they went, oh, like, uh, I don't need to come into the office. but yeah, if you are close enough where you can walk, yeah, I think that makes a big difference. Tom: Oh yeah. If I had to drive to work, I think my blood pressure would be so much higher. Uh, especially in New York. Oh, I feel so bad for the people who have to drive, whereas I'm just walking with, you know, a bagel in hand, enjoying listening to the birds. Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. well now they have, what is it, the congestion pricing in Tom: Yeah. Yeah. We're all in Brooklyn, so it doesn't affect us that much, but it's supposedly, it's, it's working great. Um, yeah. I hope we can keep it. Jeremy: I've never driven in New York and I, I wouldn't want to Tom: Yeah. It's only for the brave or the crazy. [01:00:37] The value of public writing and work Jeremy: I think that's probably a good place to, to wrap up, but is there any other thoughts you had or things you wanted to mention? Tom: No, I've just, uh, thank you so much. This has been, this has been a lot of fun. You're, you're very good at this as well. I feel like it's, uh, Jeremy: Thank you Tom: It's not easy to, to steer a conversation in a way that makes awkward people sound, uh, normal. Jeremy: I wouldn't say that, but um, what's been actually pretty helpful to me is, you have such a body of work, I guess I would say, in terms of your blogging and, just the amount that you write and the long history of projects that, that there's, you know, there's a lot to talk about and I'm sure it helps, helps your thought process as well. Tom: Yeah. I, I've been lucky to have a lot of jobs where people, where companies were like, cool with publishing everything, you know? so a lot of what I've done is, uh, is public. it's, it's, uh, I'm very, very thankful for like, early on that being a big part of company culture. Jeremy: And you can definitely tell, I think for people who look at the Placemark blog posts or, or now your, your val.town blog posts, like there's, there's a clear difference when somebody like is very intentional and, um, you know, it's good at writing versus you're doing it because, um, it's your corporate responsibility or whatever, like people can tell. Yeah. Tom: Yeah. You can't fake being interested. so you gotta work on things that are interesting. Jeremy: Tom, thanks again for, for agreeing to chat. This was fun. Tom: Yeah thank you so much.

Did you know that your physical health directly impacts your emotional state — and vice versa?  Think about it: when you're not in a good place emotionally, how does your body feel? Full of aches and pains, stomach issues, or other not-so-comfortable symptoms?  In today's episode, Dr. Tom O'Bryan, an internationally recognized speaker on food sensitivities, environmental toxins, and the development of autoimmune diseases, joins me to discuss the intricate link between physical and emotional health. You may be surprised to know that everyday substances like gluten in modified food, toxins in the environment, and even electromagnetic waves can trigger an immune response that leads to inflammation and a range of health issues, including serious conditions like Alzheimer's. Dr. Tom shares startling insights into how certain foods, especially those altered chemically to enhance taste, can adversely affect our body's defense mechanisms and even lead to addiction. We'll also explore the crucial differences in the prevalence of chemicals allowed in food and household products across different regions, like the US and the European Union. Of course, we also talk about small lifestyle adjustments that you can do right now to dramatically improve your health, such as opting for glass Tupperware or incorporating more organic products into your diet.  Listen to discover:   The link between emotional and physical health. How unresolved emotional issues can manifest physically.  Why inflammation is at the core of most health issues. The significant impact of our diet on our health, focusing on common culprits like gluten. Why small lifestyle changes can make massive impacts on your overall health.   Listen to continue your wellness journey with us and understand how to take charge of your health in today's complex world. Quotes to Remember: "If there's any area that people don't want to talk about, it's their emotions. And anytime I have a patient that says, ‘I've been everywhere, and I've tried everything, and I'm still not better,' it almost always is emotional baggage that's buried so deep, they don't know it's there." - Tom "We're born and raised in this world to think that when you have a symptom, you take whatever they tell you to take, and the symptom goes away. Now you're healthy. No, you're not. You didn't have a deficiency of the medicine." - Tom "So many people are walking around with trauma, and they don't know it; it's either they haven't touched it, they haven't looked at it, or they're walking around with anger, they're walking around with unprocessed grief, sadness, whatever it might be. And it's contributing physically." - Michelle Connecting with Dr. Tom O'Bryan: For those looking to dive deeper into the relationship between chronic inflammation and various health disorders, explore Dr. O'Bryan's resources. His insights into the effects of diet and environment on health are transformative and can be explored further through his published works and his website.   As we wrap up this enlightening discussion, consider how your own physical health could be influencing your emotional well-being. Remember, it's not just about treating symptoms but addressing the root causes that intertwine our mental and physical states. And if you'd like to join Dr. Tom O'Bryan's upcoming summit, just click here.    LINKS & RESOURCES Dr. Tom O'Bryan Website https://thedr.com/   Dr. Tom O'Bryan Instagram  https://www.instagram.com/thedrtomobryan   Dr. Tom O'Bryan Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thedr.com.english/   Dr. Tom O'Bryan YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzlefeGh3JA-Nm0jtf9iYoQ   MORE ADULT CHAIR   The Adult Chair® Website https://theadultchair.com      Instagram  https://www.instagram.com/themichellechalfant    Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheMichelleChalfant/    The Adult Chair® Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/theadultchair/    YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/Michellechalfant  

We are always looking for new, revolutionary property management tools and strategies that benefit property managers, owners, tenants, and vendors. In today's episode, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Tom and Diego from a new company called Calvary to discuss how property management entrepreneurs can improve maintenance processes at NO COST.  You'll Learn [01:35] Innovating in the property management industry [08:30] Improving maintenance at no cost to the property manager [17:26] What kinds of businesses does this work for? [21:26] The biggest maintenance challenges [27:28] How do I implement this? Tweetables “You show what you can do and then you build trust.” “It all goes back to systems, SOPs, and training individuals.” “The one piece that's not scalable in a business is depth and depth is where the magic happens.” “If you want to scale your business, you have to do the things that are unscalable.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Tom: It's a true win for everybody. It really is.  [00:00:02] Jason: And you guys don't charge the property manager... anything?  [00:00:06] Tom: Nothing.  [00:00:08] Jason: Welcome DoorGrowers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrower. DoorGrower property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. [00:00:33] Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:00:52] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:10] So today I'm hanging out with Tom and Diego Alatorre? All right. I got it. Sort of. All right. And Tom Van Waelem. Yes. Perfect. You guys are stressing me out with these last names, man. These are not easy. All right. So it's good to have you both on the show. So Diego and Tom have this cool idea and business called Calvary. And we'll get into that in a minute. [00:01:34] And our topic today is how to improve maintenance processes at no cost ever. And this is something really unique. And I was like pretty surprised when they originally shared this idea with me, their business. And so we'll get into that, but first let's get into some background between the two of you, how did you get into property management? [00:01:56] And I think this will also help, you know, qualify you to the audience. So they go, "all right. Should I trust these guys with some maintenance stuff?  [00:02:03] Diego: So actually I could go ahead and get started and tell you a little bit about my background story. Yeah. It's actually really interesting, Jason, this was looking at your podcast and I saw that you did an interview with Pete Neubig. Pete Neubig was the owner of Empire. [00:02:21] Sorry, I'm a little bit, I'm a little bit nervous. It's the first time I'm doing a podcast. And he was talking about in your podcast that he hired four individuals, right? One of those four individuals that he hired, I was one of them. I started at the very bottom. I started as an assistant to a property manager. And from there working at Empire, I started to learn that maintenance was a very big struggle. Most issues pretty much happened because of maintenance, right? Escalations, billing problems, you name it. And from that point on I became a maintenance coordinator. [00:02:58] I started to take a really big like at maintenance. And I started to understand and build processes and start to, you know, find solutions on how to handle maintenance. So, and it really helped me because once Empire merged with a bigger property management company, I was able to utilize those same processes, that same structure and we were able to implement it at a very big property management company that had over 9,000 homes at the time. [00:03:30] And so after we implemented that, it really helped that company grow because we were able to rebuild the entire company you know, and scale it. Maintenance was one of those things that was hindering that company from growing and in less than two years that company went from 9,000 doors to over 18,000 homes. [00:03:51] And so after that, first I was headhunted by a couple of property management companies that knew what I was able to do when it came to, you know, to maintenance. And so that's when I decided to start working at Austin investors, I was able to do the same exact thing, which was implement you know, the maintenance knowledge, the processes, SOPs systems, and we had a lot of success. [00:04:18] We were able to help Austin investors grow as well, and we were able to solidify the maintenance department. It was actually during that time that I was at a conference with over 100 plus property management companies, and they were talking about their maintenance struggles and their maintenance issues and why they couldn't figure out how to handle it, you know, from you know, vendor relations growing from 100 doors to 500 doors and then how to handle maintenance, you know, once you have 1000 doors and so on. And that's when I realized that I had a lot of these answers that could help them. With these maintenance struggles, right? So after noticing those particular struggles, that's when I realized that we could help multiple property management companies, you know, and that was actually the same exact time that Tom approached me with the business proposition, and his business proposition it went very well with the idea of helping multiple property management companies. So Tom, my business partner he'll tell you a little bit more about, you know, himself and how we started our relationship. But yeah, that's  [00:05:32] pretty much it.  [00:05:33] Jason: So Tom, what did you think when you heard about some of the stuff that Diego had been accomplishing? [00:05:39] Tom: Yeah, crazy. I mean, when I approached him, I was a roofing salesman at the time, and I was knocking door to door. There was just a big hailstorm that hit Austin and the surrounding areas. And I was knocking doors, you know, helping people get insurance involved so they don't have to pay it out of pocket. [00:05:55] And I reached out to Diego with the hopes of, you know, landing, you know, a lot of inspections very easily without having to bother people knocking on the actual doors. So I reached out to Diego and I was like, "Hey, listen I would love to inspect all of your roofs because I believe that we can save your homeowners a lot of money just simply by inspecting them. If I find that if the homeowner doesn't want to continue, that's fine. At least the homeowner will know what the situation is with their roof." [00:06:19] Diego said, "wow, great. I've never heard about that. Let's do it." So we did the project, inspected 600 homes myself, and then after the project, we saved homeowners a lot. [00:06:29] We replaced about 60 or 70 roofs. So that's a lot of money that we saved because insurance claims, they have an expiration date, usually depending on the insurance company. And anyway, after that project, I reached out to Diego and I was like, "hey, what do you think? Do you think other property management companies would do this? Or are you the only one who was willing to do this? Because it was a lot of work." Right.  [00:06:52] And he was like, "yeah, I think they would, but," he said, "you're forgetting about all the other trades." [00:06:58] I was like, "what do you mean?" I was like, "yeah, roofing is only about 10 percent of all the work orders. So you're forgetting about all this." [00:07:06] And he said, "listen, I've been thinking about the same thing, and I believe that there's a way for us to provide excellent maintenance to all property management companies and we can figure out a way for us to do it for them for free." [00:07:20] I was like, "well, look, if we partner with multiple property management companies, and we get so much work, we can leverage that volume with our techs. So we reduce our technicians that we work with, we reduce their marketing and sales costs, and then they give us a percentage, which is much less than the marketing and sales costs. So the vendor wins, the homeowner wins because they don't get marked up, the property management company, of course, wins because they don't have to pay for payroll, and we win. [00:07:52] So everybody really wins. And also of course, the tenant wins because with our systems and our really well trained people. We can actually provide great service, faster and arounds and all of that.  [00:08:03] Jason: All right. So I think we need like a break sound effect. Everybody listening is like, "wait, whoa, what'd you just say?" [00:08:10] Like, that's like, sounds crazy. Could you take us back through that and help us make this make sense? So, cause you're talking a little crazy here. Like you can make maintenance more affordable and like, and do it and it would be free for them. And so let's break down the business model. So how does this work for a property manager? [00:08:34] Tom: All right. So when we partner with a property management company we basically. We can plug into their org chart wherever they'd like. So, for example, we work with big companies and we plug in underneath their maintenance coordinator, right? So that maintenance coordinator, they have about three, four hundred properties that they manage. [00:08:55] We just plug in there, they become our supervisor, and we provide the maintenance coordinators, we provide the vendor network, we provide everything. So we handle the work orders from start to finish. And whoever is supervising us within the company is also the liaison with the higher up. [00:09:13] Okay. Does that make sense? So for the smaller companies, for example, we would report to property managers. If a property manager is currently handling all of their maintenance themselves, they can just leverage our team. We have a specialized team with following the right processes. They leverage us and they just supervise us. [00:09:31] They send us the work and they become a supervisor. It eliminates 90 percent of their work. Yeah, sure. You know, sometimes there's an escalation. It's still maintenance, but at least we can handle most of it. They get daily updates. Everything runs very smooth.  [00:09:46] Jason: Okay. So the property managers listening are like, "yeah, but how's this free?" [00:09:50] Like explain that again, like take us through, how is it possible for this to be free? Because they know you want to make money. This is a business. Yes. So how is it free? And if it's free, then are the maintenance costs being marked up. Expressly high, right? And so this there, there's got to be a catch is what they're thinking. [00:10:10] Tom: Yeah, so there's no catch. So the way it works is with our vendors. We send them a lot of work. That work means that they have less cost on marketing and sales department. Usually that's about 25 to 30 percent of their revenue.  [00:10:25] Jason: Yeah. So let's explain this. So like, if you're a vendor, you have to spend a lot of time trying to market. [00:10:32] You're doing door flyers. You're like putting out mailers. You're like, they're wasting a ton of money. I get this stuff in the mail and it just goes right in the trash, right? They are going out on bids constantly trying to give quotes and none of this is making them money. This is all an expense. [00:10:49] So they're spending like a third of their revenue just to try and get customers. Exactly. Yes, sir. Yeah, exactly. And so vendors, you're able to basically eliminate that expense.  [00:11:02] Tom: Yes, correct. We cut it more than in half.  [00:11:04] Jason: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that's a big savings for them. They're not having to go out on bids. They're not having to like waste time. With the property management company, they're not having to deal with a lot of headaches and garbage. They just have work. And that's really what they want to spend their time doing is just doing the work. So this sounds like a selling point for these vendors and an incentive for them to work with you over maybe other, like through you rather than directly with property managers or rather out in the marketplace with random homeowners. [00:11:35] Tom: That is exactly. [00:11:36] Diego: Exactly. And the really unique thing about this, Jason, is that it doesn't just save them money, right? And we don't just get you know, the flat rate or we don't just mark up. We actually save the owner's money. Why? Because these vendors, they're so happy with the amount of work that we're sending them, that they also provide the best rates in the market. [00:12:02] Which are usually way below average. You know why? Because they want to be your number one go to technician, you know, they want you to send as much work as possible. And so they're pretty much booked up. You know, most of the vendors that we utilize, they're pretty much booked up. [00:12:19] And so they don't want to lose that relationship with you, which, you know, allows us to get better pricing for the owners, because that means we'll continue to get more work, you know, we'll continue to get more business, which also allows the vendors that we work with to expand as well. [00:12:37] We've had multiple vendors that started working with us in Austin and they have expanded to Houston, San Antonio, Dallas. And, you know, it's really a win scenario for everyone because vendors save money, owners save money, and property management companies don't have to pay any money when it comes to handling maintenance. [00:12:58] You know, they just have to have someone that oversees us.  [00:13:01] Tom: And I also would like to add in terms of pricing. So for example, because we handle so much volume, we actually have access to very good priced GE appliances. So the homeowners will pay around 15 to 25 percent less on appliances. That's black on white proof. You can check our price versus the store and then also Goodman HVAC units. We have extremely good pricing on a regular unit for 2400 square foot home. We save a homeowner easily 1500 to 2,500 dollars, depending on who we compared with. But those are things that we can actually prove black and white that we say.  [00:13:42] Jason: Yeah, awesome. So they're getting better rates on maintenance. They're not having to spend any money on doing that. They get discounted rates on appliances because of your buying power and they get discounted rates on HVAC.  [00:13:57] Tom: Yes, sir. It's really a win. It's a true win for everybody. It really is. And it works.  [00:14:03] Jason: Yeah, and you guys don't charge the property manager... anything?  [00:14:09] Tom: Nothing. Nothing. No. So because we have such a efficient processes we can provide a maintenance coordinator, a maintenance manager, a regional manager, we have vendor onboarding, we have a tenant success, and quality control. We have everything in place to function as a full maintenance department. And again, we just plug in right where you want it underneath a property manager, maintenance manager, maintenance coordinator. It doesn't matter. We just report and that person becomes the liaison to the directors. [00:14:42] Jason: Got it. So you guys can be the entire maintenance department for a small manager. If a big company already has. Some things going that they really like and some team members that they really value, then you guys can just plug in and be the pieces that they still need.  [00:14:57] Tom: Yeah, that's important to state. We don't want you to fire people. [00:15:02] That's not our goal. What our goal is, though, is now those people who are already in place, they can focus on tenant relationships. That is word to mouth right there. Same thing with the homeowners. Now you're going to grow your business because you provide a better service and you do not have to scale as fast. [00:15:20] So even without firing somebody, you just keep those people. They give a better service. Now you grow, but you don't have to hire as fast.  [00:15:30] Jason: The one piece that's not scalable in a business is depth and depth is where the magic happens. I always say to my clients, if you want to scale your business, you have to do the things that are unscalable and being able to spend more time talking directly with the owners, connecting with them, letting them know what's going on in maintenance, making them feel calm and that you've got things handled. [00:15:54] Yeah. That interaction is what's going to retain those clients. I mean, the number one reason people leave property management companies and go find somebody else is communication. It's lack of communication. So you can increase the communication level significantly. So you keep these clients forever and Calvary can handle all the maintenance, correct? [00:16:15] This sounds like such a good idea. Why has nobody thought of this before? Why is no one else doing this?  [00:16:22] Tom: Honestly, I think because it's hard. Maintenance is hard. And then not only that, yeah, I don't know if in maintenance, I guess you have to be a specific type of person, right to be able to handle that. And then you need to match that with entrepreneurship. Right. And most people, I think they have not seen the disconnect it's. Within the culture, all maintenance is handled inside the company. So I think, I don't know if like, a third company maintenance team has not come across. [00:16:57] Also, all of our competitors, they charge. They charge. Why? Because they can. You know, we want to provide value. We don't have to charge. We can. We don't have to. Our service is worth the extra cost, but we don't want to. You know, we want the smaller companies and bigger companies just to be able to grow without an extra cost. [00:17:17] And of course, by doing this it's smart business wise because now, you know, we can get our foot in the door more easily. So it lowers the barrier to entry.  [00:17:25] Jason: Okay. So, how small is too small of a company to work with you? Some people listening are like, "man, this sounds like a great thing. Like, I don't really like maintenance. [00:17:34] I don't have a maintenance coordinator yet. I would love to work with them." What's too small?  [00:17:38] Tom: Honestly, I don't think there is a too small. And the reason one caveat though, if we are already active in the market.  [00:17:46] Jason: And that's the next question then is there's certain markets you mentioned, you know, around Austin, Texas, et cetera, which markets are you in currently? [00:17:54] And what does it take for you to go into a new market? Like, so it's an option for people.  [00:18:01] Tom: So we're currently in all Texas markets. So Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth. We are very active in Denver, Colorado Springs. We have Tucson, Charlotte, North Carolina, Detroit. So those are the markets that we're already active in, so it's easy to just add a smaller PM company because we don't need to set up the whole vendor network right. We're constantly tackling new markets, by the way. But if we are in a market if you are a property manager looking, you're watching this and you're in a market that we are not in, we need about three weeks. [00:18:36] Jason: Yeah. Okay. That's it. So three weeks and how many units for a new market for it to make sense for you?  [00:18:42] Tom: I think 250 would be the minimum.  [00:18:45] Jason: Yes. Okay. Yeah. Got it. All right. So a property manager in a new market, if they've got at least 250 units. That could be it. If there's smaller ones, maybe they get together with their NARPM buddies and they're like, "Hey, let's get this." [00:18:57] And they add up to 250. That could work.  [00:19:00] Tom: Yeah. But also whenever we open a new market, for example, 250 would not be profitable for us. So then we just focus on these markets as well. So we have our sales team now has more to do.  [00:19:10] Jason: So then you start to like build that market up. Correct. Got it. And that builds up the business there and that allows you to get the discounts and do all the good juicy stuff that you guys do. [00:19:21] All right. Okay. Got it. Okay, cool. So you guys, this product sounds like a no brainer. And so you guys must be pretty busy rolling out to new markets.  [00:19:30] Tom: Yeah, we are. I mean, we started business when Diego? On October 21st, 2022, we received our first work order and now we're in what 12 markets already. [00:19:41] Jason: And it must you know, it sounds like Diego is a pretty sharp operator. So like the systemization of being able to do these rollouts is probably pretty tight.  [00:19:49] Tom: Oh, yeah. You go.  [00:19:51] Diego: Yeah. So it's actually one of the things that I wanted to mention, Jason cause Pete Neubig actually, you know, mentioned it in his podcast as well. [00:19:59] It all goes back to systems, SOPs and training individuals. You know what I mean? Because. A lot of people focus on churn when it comes to owner churn or you know, tenants leaving and so on. Right. But not that many people focus on you know, your maintenance coordinator churn or your internal churn. [00:20:20] And so that's one of the things that we like to focus on, you know, you want to train individuals correctly. You don't just want to, you know, let their hand go and roam free and figure out things on their own. You want to take time to, you know, to teach them, to train them, for them to understand the guidelines, the SOPs, the structure, so that whenever we do fit in with a new property management company, [00:20:46] they're ready to go. They understand the business, they understand the concept, they understand what is needed of them to make that maintenance department better. Because at the end of the day, that's what we want. We want to help property management companies grow. And so we can grow alongside them. And because that's what allows us to, you know, to continue to grow. [00:21:07] And so it all goes back to that. Yeah, exactly.  [00:21:10] Jason: So Diego, you know, having seen inside probably several lots of property management companies, maintenance issues and problems and having, you know, and being able to brilliantly do it really effectively and seeing that contrast, what are the biggest challenges that you're seeing or the biggest mistakes property managers are making when it comes to maintenance? And I think this is valuable because it helps people to understand how your brain works and how what you do at Calvary is a bit different than what they're doing.  [00:21:39] Diego: I think it's a couple of things, but let me pick the top that come to mind I would say vendor relations. Vendor relationships are so important because what ends up happening is if you tarnish vendor relationships, what ends up happening, you don't have good, reliable vendors that you can count on, you know, that will provide the best service, the best pricing possible. And so I feel like. In this industry, a lot of companies have treated vendors poorly, you know, and we notice it constantly when we go to new markets they usually mention like, "Hey, I don't want to work with a property management company." And then, you know, you ask them why, and it's usually because of that. You know, building that relationship is very important because they're part of your group, they're part of your network, and once they see that they're super, super reliable. They give you the best pricing, the best service possible, and so on. I would say that's number one. [00:22:40] Jason: And before we move on from that one, like, this is really interesting because what we hear a lot in the industry is people complaining about their vendors. Like property managers are always complaining about their vendors saying they're the problem. They're unreliable and having such a negative perception of the vendors and they might be creating it. Like maybe the property managers are the ones creating this problem. They're like, but maybe they're not like paying them on time, or maybe they're not like being responsive in communication, or maybe they're treating them poorly if there's like an issue or a mistake or a challenge, right. Yeah. Putting them into a bidding war. Yeah. None of them want to be doing that. Right. It's a big waste of their time.  [00:23:20] Diego: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. I'm not saying all of them, you know, all property management companies do that, but I would say most do have that, you know, that they feel like they're entitled to get the best service instead of working together to, to build that relationship, to get the best service to have reliable individuals.  [00:23:40] Jason: What's the next thing that you noticed in contrast between, you know, the property managers that are ineffective with maintenance and dealing with issues versus how you do things at Calvary?  [00:23:50] Diego: Yeah. So I think it goes back to the maintenance coordinators or property managers, right? [00:23:56] Everybody is kind of doing their own thing. Right. So I've gone to different property management companies, and they're like, "Oh, no, I do things like this because this is the way to go. This is how I've been doing it for so long." But if you have five property managers, or if you have five maintenance coordinators. [00:24:14] They're all doing their own thing. They're not all working as a group, you know, towards the same direction. Which goes back to the structure, it goes back to the ESO piece. And so I feel like not that many companies understand maintenance entirely and so everybody's kind of doing a little bit different things, which is not scalable, you know. You can't have five individuals working, you know, differently because then what's going to happen is you're going to have people frustrated saying, "Hey, but this person said I could do this, but now you're telling me I can't do this and so on." [00:24:51] So I think it also goes, you know, that's one of the biggest things that I've seen going into different markets, different companies everybody's doing their own thing and so.  [00:25:01] Jason: So there's a lack of consistency and yeah, I could see how that'd be frustrating for vendors too. If like a company had like five property managers, like bugging them portfolio style and all of them are different. [00:25:12] One of them might be a jerk to the vendors and the other one might be cool. Yeah, it could be messy.  [00:25:17] Diego: Yeah, and then last but not least, numbers, KPIs, they never lie. And so if you have maintenance service requests that are taking too long, well, tenants are going to be frustrated. [00:25:32] Owners are also going to be frustrated. Why? Because most of the time, especially for small property management companies, the tenant has the owner's phone number most of the time, or, you know, I've seen that happen many times. So what they will do is they will reach out to the owner and they'll be like, "hey, they're lagging on this. They're not taking care of this. Hey, I'm having an issue with this." And so if you don't take care of things in a timely manner, it's always going to affect your business. I've seen where, you know, some clients they're okay with taking 14, 15 days to handle a maintenance request. And that's a big no no. [00:26:09] You know, you want things taken care of in less than five days. That should always be the goal. If it's an emergency, you want to handle it same day, you know, or at least mitigate the issue that same day so that the tenant is happy. So that they trust in the service that you're providing, and that will allow you to, you know, to dictate how you run your maintenance department and how tenants are trustworthy of your services. [00:26:36] And then, of course, you know, owners are also going to be happy with the services that you're providing, since you're not going to have that many escalations, that many issues, or that many problems that surface.  [00:26:46] Jason: So, yeah, it seems like kind of a snowball effect that when you start to be inconsistent, you don't have a quick enough turnaround time on maintenance. [00:26:54] You've got, you know, all these challenges that it starts to then. Turn it into escalations, more conversations, owners might even be getting involved. And so it starts to get messy. And that complexity then takes over the business because then something that should have taken maybe an hour is now taking three hours of manpower and time in the business. [00:27:16] And so then it's like the business owner is trying to run a race and they're shooting themselves in the feet, right? So things are just like snowballing and getting worse and worse. And then they're like, this is chaos. This is crazy. Yeah. So, all right. So those that are dealing with these challenges, they're like, maintenance is tough, like vendors are tough. [00:27:35] Like all of these are problems and they don't have all this stuff dialed in. Or maybe they've got things pretty well dialed in, but they're like, "Hey man, maybe I could save some money on. You know, team, or I could just improve and get my team focused on higher level tasks of like communicating with people, more depth and retaining clients longer." [00:27:53] What. What would be the first step? How do they connect with you?  [00:27:57] Diego: So they can pretty much, you know, reach out. We could set up a meeting where we can go ahead and explain, you know, go a little bit further in depth with their particular property management company, you know, how many homes they have and so on. [00:28:12] And then if they do sign up with us, in 7 days, we'll have a plan ready to go for them that will dictate exactly, you know, what is needed and what we're going to be implementing within those 7 days so that we're ready to hit the ground running.  [00:28:26] Jason: Yeah, that's pretty awesome. And so what's kind of the onboarding process like, like for those that would be getting started? What would, what's sort of the experience?  [00:28:36] Tom: So we have a two week process. So it starts by sending over the contract so they can read it over. [00:28:42] It starts by also getting all of the data of the current of the units they currently have, their history, the history of the work orders. Also, their current vendors are very important. We understand that property management companies, most of them have already built solid relationships with those vendors. [00:28:59] We don't want them to push them out. No, actually what we're going to do is we're going to contact those vendors. We're going to propose our proposal. And we're going to tell them like, "Hey, you will get more work, you know, by also getting work from other property management companies." So, yes, so we can use the same vendors as well. [00:29:18] So we collect all of the data, then we analyze the data. We implement everything into our software. There's something we actually haven't touched on, but we have found that Rentvine is a really, I mean, the best software out there. And we're also providing that for free to our clients. So we can I mean, we can work with any software, but if we do not have one, we can work with Rentvine. [00:29:44] Anyway, so that is also part of that onboarding process. Maybe it's like, "okay what software do you use? Do you want to switch to Rentvine?" And then over the second week, we start implementing. We have a few meetings where we discuss all the final, like who like the communication with the billing department. [00:30:01] Who's going to take care of that? Is that going to be the liaison? Is that going to be somebody of ours? So, yeah, it's a two week process. We have everything dialed down from a launch date, minus 14 days to launch date.  [00:30:13] Jason: And the reason you like Rentvine, do they have a pretty good maintenance system?  [00:30:18] Tom: Yeah, the communication is excellent. [00:30:21] The communication can be logged with timestamps, but more importantly as well, it aligns very well with bookkeeping. The bookkeeping is really solid in there and it just works.  [00:30:32] Jason: So, what about those that have different maintenance tools, like maybe they've been using Latchel and they've got them handling the phones, or maybe they've been using Property Meld and they're using that text based communication system, these things that they need to keep, are these things that you would work with? [00:30:49] Like this sends a whole nother level of complexity I would imagine to your business.  [00:30:54] Tom: Yeah, no, it actually, I mean, it works. So we started, so to get our foot in the door in the industry, we actually started as a vendor, right? So we, our systems work with any software. So it does work. It adds complexity, yes. But if we assign a certain maintenance coordinator to a certain account, they get used to that very fast. So it does work.  [00:31:15] Jason: Got it. So you can work with whatever tools that they do have. And if not, you've got some good ideas for them to get their maintenance systems dialed in well.  [00:31:24] Tom: Correct. [00:31:24] Diego: Yeah. Correct. And then, so that actually brings up a really good topic. So we can help them save money because most property management companies, they utilize, for example, Property Meld. Right. And that's an external tool to their actual software, which is usually Appfolio. And so they usually pay extra for per property for Property Meld, if they switch over to Rentvine instead of Property Meld, then we pay for that and it's, you know, it's completely free for them. So that means they save money there as well and pretty much Rentvine can do what Property Meld does. And one of the reasons why people choose Property Meld is because of the communication and Rentvine has a very good communication factor built into it. But it goes a little bit further when it comes to the, like, Tom mentioned the billing processes, because vendors can go ahead and submit the bills there and you can break down all of the information there, which fits in perfectly to the tool that the property manager is using. [00:32:27] So it allows us to have a very robust system that allows property managers, you know, to save money by choosing to work with us.  [00:32:35] Tom: So. Yeah.  [00:32:37] Jason: The more you share, the more stupid people might feel for not working with you.  [00:32:43] Tom: I have one more, 24- 7 maintenance. Okay. Say that again. 24- 7 maintenance. [00:32:49] So rather than paying an external company for a call center to, you know, receive phone calls from tenants. Yeah, we actually have a night crew that will pick up the phone and also dispatch those work orders for work orders, of course, that are dispatchable at night, right? For certain emergencies. So we have a team working around the clock. [00:33:10] The night team is a little bit smaller, but it's around the clock.  [00:33:13] Jason: That's amazing. So, yeah, because I know there's companies that are using Appfolio, they're using Property Meld, they're using maybe Latchel or EZ Repair H otline or something to do the calls. And these are all stacking as expenses in the business. [00:33:30] And then they're also having to coordinate all of the maintenance and go and source and find all the vendors. And you're saying, "we'll just take over all of this for you and it'll not cost you anything." Exactly. It worked. It worked. So, all right. So, a lot of people might be thinking this sounds too good to be true. [00:33:51] So let's say I sign up with these guys and I switch all my stuff over to using them and then I don't like it or there's something like they're afraid, right? This is their fear. And I've given everything to them. Are they going to have some benefits still? Like, will they have better processes? [00:34:09] Will they know what's going on? Like, like how do we lower this risk for those that are like concerned about handing over a piece of their business to somebody else and then what if it isn't good? Like, that's their fear.  [00:34:23] Tom: Yeah. So, part of our marketing strategy and part of our vision and mission is to share all of our information. [00:34:30] So, we're not going to keep everything to ourselves. We're actually in the process of writing a book, which will be finished very soon, on how we actually do the maintenance. So, it's one thing saying, "oh, we know how to do it." It's another thing showing it and that's what we're going to do. So we have the processes, we can share that with the teams, you know, if we're hopping on a call, we can share what that is, but also to make it available to the public, we've written a book, it's almost finished, which holds all of our processes in a story form, which then is connected to presentations and actually implementable knowledge. So if they don't want to work with us, fine. We will still teach you how to do it. That also means that, you know...  [00:35:11] Jason: like you're open sourcing your product.  [00:35:14] Tom: It is the 2023 way of marketing, right? You show what you can do and then you build trust. So, but that's really, and you know, it's also to help people. Many property management companies might not want to do this and that's totally fine, you know, but we can still help those people.  [00:35:31] Jason: Cool Well, I mean if things go well for you guys, which sounds like it will because it's a pretty sharp product If there might be the day when people are wanting Calvary doing the maintenance and not local property managers handling it. [00:35:46] So that's our vision. Awesome guys. I think this sounds like a no brainer. It sounds like a really awesome product. I'm really excited to see what you guys do. And I'm sure there's several that are interested in just once they hear this podcast episode, they'll be interested in giving you guys a shot.because maintenance is one of the biggest complaints we hear about in the industry. It's usually the first big challenge they all need to solve. And it sounds like you guys have got the product where it's solved and they can just get some Calvary and everything's going to be better. So, yeah.  [00:36:19] Tom: So our website is cavalry.works. That is cavalry, C A V A L R Y dot W O R K S, because cavalry works.  [00:36:29] Jason: Got it. Okay, cool. So check it out, everybody. So anything else you want to say before we end the show today?  [00:36:37] Tom: Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity to come and present us. It was our first podcast. I hope we did a good job. [00:36:43] Jason: Diego's camera's a little crazy, but it kept us on our toes. So I'm really impressed with you two. I know we met earlier and chatted and I was like this like, it sounds like such a crazy good business model. And I think it's possible because of the expertise that you both have and that you're able to bring to the table and excited to see about that. [00:37:05] When that book comes out, maybe we'll have you come on again and plug that book. That'd be really cool. And then man, Diego, I'd love to have you come and maybe present to some of our clients in our mastermind, just about maintenance because everybody has this challenge and I think it'd be really cool. [00:37:20] So. All right. Well, looking forward to hanging out a little bit more with y'all and seeing what you guys accomplished. So, thanks for being on the DoorGrow show.  [00:37:30] Thank you, Jason. [00:37:32] All right. Cool. So if you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, grow your business and you are struggling with getting more business and getting more doors, we can help you with that. [00:37:45] And we are really good at helping people grow. One of our clients, brand new, zero doors went through our rapid revamp class that we teach in our mastermind had zero doors and then after we cleaned up to the front end of his business, he started working on adding doors part time, like maybe 2 to 3 hours a day and then he was able to add and break the hundred door barrier. He was able to add a hundred doors in six months, and he was doing this part time. That would be impossible with advertising. That would be impossible with going and buying cold leads from doing SEO or pay per click or content marketing or social media marketing. [00:38:22] We gave him the right strategies. He went and took action. And he spent less time doing it than most people do. And he was able to add than most people do trying to grow their business. He was able to add a hundred doors in six months. That was what our client, Kent, who we just recently had on our podcast episode. [00:38:39] And if Kent can do it, you can do it too. And our clients can add a hundred to 200 doors every year, organically, just by using our strategies. If you have a really good full time BDM, we can help you add two to four hundred doors a year, organically. And then, we can also get you the right processes, and the right systems and things dialed in, so that you can become infinitely scalable, and then you can start to do acquisitions. [00:39:06] And you will make a lot more money off their doors, than the person you're buying them from was. So anyway, reach out to us at DoorGrow. You can check us out at DoorGrow. com and join our free Facebook group. You can get access to that. We have some free gifts for you by joining our community, go to DoorGrow club. com. This is just for property management, entrepreneurs, property management, business owners. Join that community. If you're starting a property management company, join that community. If you have an established company, join that community. People are helping people out in that group. It's an awesome community. [00:39:37] And our hope is that you will get so much value from the free stuff that we put out there and from our free content and our podcasts that you will want to join our mastermind, get beyond the paywall and see the amazing stuff that we're helping companies do and be part of an even more amazing community, our mastermind. [00:39:56] So until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:39:59] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:40:25] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Peter Tchir, Academy Securities Head of Macro Strategy, points to potential issues in the global supply chain amid ongoing geopolitical conflicts. Libby Cantrill, PIMCO Managing Director of Public Policy, says the margin of error for House Republicans to avoid a government shutdown has narrowed. Dan Ives, Wedbush Sr. Equity Research Analyst, predicts that Apple could look to buy ESPN. Alexander Goldfarb, Piper Sandler Senior Research Analyst, says the commercial real estate market is in the midst of a rare phenomenon.Get the Bloomberg Surveillance newsletter, delivered every weekday. Sign up now: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/surveillance    Full Transcript: This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keene, along with Jonathan Farrow and Lisa Abramowitz. Join us each day for insight from the best and economics, geopolitics, finance and investment. Subscribe to Bloomberg Surveillance on demand on Apple, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts, and always on Bloomberg dot Com, the Bloomberg Terminal, and the Bloomberg Business app. Our guest of the Morning to synthesize all this with our question. Peter Cheers joins us. Now ahead of macro strategy at Academy Securities, you look for price up, yield down. What will that do to the equity market. I think for now it's going to be good. I think we see four thirty on tens before before we see four to seventy five. I think the pain trade is actually to lower yields. A lot of people who are bullished at five kind of got short again. I think that works until we get down about four thirty five. Equities rally on the back of that. Then we realize we're getting here because things like oil copper receding because the economy is actually slowing fast so I think at that point that's when the recession fear start getting priced back into stock. Taking Academy Securities three year view, you've got that slowing global demand. Nick bennenbrook On from Wells Fargo stunning with a two point four percent global GDP call. Can you own equities out with a three year vision? I think you could if you had a three year vision. I think right now it's more like a two to three week vision. Everything's so volatile. We don't know where this economy is turning. We don't know what's going on there. And one thing that's starting to scare me is we're having a lot of discussions about the Middle East. We're starting to hear a little bit more concerns about supply chains. I don't think it's an issue today, but if as this drags on, if there's any degree of escalation, supply chains become an issue again. So I think that will be a big drag on the economy. The Middle East crude last month is just unreal. To see a move of almost eleven percent lower on WTI, even with the heightened tension in the Middle least, A lot of people appointing to maybe demand starting to crack in a certain places around the world, Europe one, maybe even the United States gone into next year. What's your view on that. Yeah, I think the last time I was here, I said buying oil was not going to be a good hedge for escalation there because oil had been under so much pressure before, and I think that's what we're seeing again. There's just that lack of demand and the Saudis definitely have the ability to turn on the tap if they want. We're clearly trying to figure out how to work with Venezuela, and so far it looks like Aram's going to continue to pump oil despite the sanctions, despite the height intensions there. So there's not much in favor of oil right now, and I think that's a very crowded long position, so I could see that breaking lower coming into next year. You mentioned a two to three week view. I'm with you. You You know what's about to happen. Then in the next two to three weeks, we're going to get a load of people publishing their outlooks for twenty twenty four. Can you help us understand how you get any visibility whatsoever into next year? What's the strategic view going into you know, I think there's still some big themes. I think AI, how people are using AI, the efficiency that that could cause for companies. I think that's going to be a big theme still. So you can look over that. Where are we going to be on the defense spending? Where are we going to be in terms of geopolitical spending. I think the reshoring is still real. I think a reasonably healthy economy with their decent jobs is still the overriding thing. So I think markets are a little bit more volatile, volatile right now than the underlying economy is. So if you put this together to what you said earlier, that you see benchmark ten year yields getting down to four point three five percent before going back up to four point seventy five percent, or just basically they're heading lower. Does that mean that we're going to have slower growth but still the soft landing and that it basically people are going to get a little concerned about stocks, but that it sets up a rally. And I'm just trying to understand. No, I think a very convoluted range of thoughts. So I think as we move towards four thirty five, you get this, Oh, this is all good for stocks, and then as you start moving below four forty, I think people realize, oh man, we're getting there. Because things are not in the economy. The job market has changed, you know, white collar workers aren't doing as well as they were. You're seeing, i think, some potential for spending. You're seeing little cracks in the housing prices. So I think, all of a sudden, by year end, we're going to be back on a hard landing discussion and it'll be the boy who Cried Wolf, but we'll all be back talking about no more soft landing. We've overdone it. So you think that at that point, treasures will continue to be Haven's once again, even though arguably one of the biggest drivers of the yield move has been Washington, d C. And it doesn't look like that's changing. That's not changing. But again that's a three five ten year sort of pain. It's you know, we get ahead of ourselves. And I do think the one problem we all have is the bond market's so big. You talk about these numbers, two hundred and fifty billion, and it's huge, but it's you know, a fraction of twenty five trillions. So I think the ability to digest this you see corporate bonds come out twenty two billion yesterday, I believe it was you know, there's no problem digesting this, so I think the market's pretty healthy. I think people see yields as attractive. You're going to see people continue to add to that, so I think that's fine. It's going to be the risk side of things that gets people a little bit more spooked. Tell me about the November real yield shift we've seen. We've seen the ten year real yield migrate two point five zero percent to two point one nine percent. That makes things easier for everybody, right, it does. But I think the nominal yields still play a big role. They're still relatively high, and we had that move from you know, three seventy five to five, so we haven't clawed a lot of that back. I think there's this long you know, invariable lag time is really long. This time people did such a good job locking in yields. It's only now that you're hearing more and more people have to roll over their debt. Right if you issue to your debt back in the hey day, Now it's rolling over. Three year debt's not quite rolling over. So I think we're just starting to see that slow down impact. And I think one point John brings up, we've got what we've been calling this faux liquidity, this fake liquidity. It feels like the markets are super liquid at any given price point, but the ability to gap high or low is there. So I think we got pushed to five percent by people getting stopped out, pushing on yields. We're now got back to four fifty in a heartbeat because people are getting stopped out. So that's what we're trying to I think manage is like, what's the real noise versus the signal? You mentioned the Great Financinc. The Great Financinc. Of the pandemic, the huge wealth transfer we had from Treasury to the consumer. Consumer balance sheets were stronger. Everyone under the Sunny wonder House remortgage termed out that debt low rates. Corporate America did the same thing. One place didn't Treasury standrug Amit has been very critical of leadership a Treasury over the last i don't know, five years through that low interest rate period not termin out the debt. What are your thoughts on that? What do you think about that conversation? Yeah, I think they should have done what corporations did. I'm always a big believer, right, you know, borrolong it blocks in, you reduce volatility. And we're having a lot of conversation with clients. Probably a little bit hypothetical at this point, but maybe people are supposed to be under weight treasuries and T bills and way overweight whether it's commercial paper or corporations. That right, if you take a step back and talk about this as being governance, right, the US governance is offer right now in terms of our spending, in terms of we talk about not paying our bills. Right, you look at the large corporation's world. They have good corporate governance, they have global plans. They never once would ever even think about saying, oh, we're not going to pay our debt on time because we don't feel like it. So I think you're supposed to be starting to push really heavily to overweight high quality corporates, maybe in commercial paper, maybe some abs, and move really underweight T bills. So do you foresee a time when Apple can borrow at a lower rate than the US government? You know that ability to break the sovereign ceiling rarely happens, even in emerging markets. I don't think it happens here, but I do think you can see really tight spread compression, especially at the front end of the corporate bond curve. So I like that as a trade. Do you think we get convergence spread compression on governance issues alone? I think that will play a part of it. Yeah. I think the top quality companies have a ton of cash. The liquidity in the bond markets not what it once was, So whatever you have to pay up their own tea bills, maybe you don't. And I think this government issue is going to become a real thought again. If you think about it, why would you lend to someone who talks about not paying your debt because for a long time they've had the privilege of acting recklessly correct talked about this so many times there's been no consequence for it. Why is this time different. I think something we talked about before snapped in the market, and all of a sudden people are really questioning this whole you know, correlation or coalescence of events that have been on the back of everyone's mind. I don't think it cracks this time, certainly, but I think it starts setting us in stage again. I always go back to the Great Financial Crisis. It started breaking in two thousand and six, got fixed, broken in in two thousand and seven, got fixed, broken in in two thousand and seven, got fixed. So I feel now we've started this unwined and unless DC gets its act together, this is going to be Every time it rears its head, it'll get uglier. But it's not this year's story anymore. Pet love it always thoughtful Pitcher. There of academic securities. Lebby Cantrell joints Now managing director had a public policy a pinkel. You're the only one I can do this with. Can you take the election results and you can fold them into a government shutdown which happens in about three cups of coffee? Can you make that exercise happen? Yeah? Well, good morning, and thank you for not asking me a question about orgo. I did I take organic chemistry at school, so thanks thanks for testing me on that. Yeah, so I do think that the read through actually from last night, Tom So thanks thanks for a layup. Here is actually Democrats won a special election in Rhode Island. This was a is a blue race, a blue seat, this is a house seat. That means that they have two hundred and thirteen seats in the House. Republicans, however, only have two hundred and twenty one. They have a special election in Utah in a few weeks. The reason why this actually means this is important from a government shutdown perspective is that means practically that Republicans now can only lose three seats excuse me, three votes in order to pass a funding bill that they need a pass to avoid a shutdown by next Friday. So it just means that the margin of error is much more narrow for Republicans. Speaker Johnson was already needing to thread a needle, if you will, and that a needle point has just gotten even more narrow from the result from last night and threading the needle. What will moderate Republicans do? I don't have it in front of me, but I'm going to suggest on Long Island east of New York City, the Republicans had a good night. What are the moderate I guess the former president would say, Republicans in name only. How do they adapt an adjust off the selection? Yeah, I think that what we learned last night is that the abortion rights still very much resonate. That was obviously a takeaway from the twenty two, twenty twenty two midterms, where abortion really emboldened turnout. It shows last night that this really is very much an issue, especially when it is on the ballot. Now, I think for twenty twenty four, many of these folks, particularly in those districts Tom that you mentioned, where there are you know, Republicans who are defending Biden districts. The Democrats will make this an issue. You're going to hear a lot about abortion rights over the next year because of the results of last night, just sort of underscoring that this clearly is a resident voting issue for voters. So in terms of the government shutdown, what does that make those moderate Republicans do They are voting in lockstep here. They really are trying to give Speaker Johnson, you know, the benefit of the doubt. I think that will continue. I think the big question for markets is, though, is that enough can they actually avoid a shutdown If they pass a partisan bill, Tom, we will see a shutdown next Friday. So again kind of an open question of how this all resolves. But as of now, it looks like they are voting in a partisan way, which means that shutdown risk is you know, I think is increased over the last week or so. Do markets care though, I mean, as a shutdown basically, okay, they're going to do it for twenty four hours for effect and then we'll move on. Yeah, least, I think that's that's that's that's the real the real issue. If it is a temporary shutdown, no, this will just be more DC noise. If it's a longer, more prolonged shutdown, it does become I mean, the economic impacts of you know, lots of federal workers being furloughed not actually collecting a paycheck could matter. And also, you know, the data matters, right. If we don't get data from the Department of Labor, for instance, that makes the Fed's job, you know, a little bit a little bit harder. And we can also see, you know that this term premium that you all been talking about, we could see you know, some of the yields back up again as well on account of this. So I think you're right. If it's a short term shutdown, no, the markets probably don't care. If it's longer term, however, you know, it may it may weigh on you know. Again, I just sort of the confidence around sort of the political apparatus in Washington, d C. Just shifting from last night's elections to what we're expecting next year, a presidential election. How much of a certainty do you think that it is that we're going to President Biden versus former President Trump. How much will tonight's debate really color that discussion about potential other running candidates for the Republican Party in particular. Yeah, so, I think what we've been messaging to client Lisa is with high conviction President Biden will be the nominee for the Democratic Party. This idea that he is going to drop out, that Governor Newsom, for instance, may jump into the race, it just is not It's just not realistic at this point. Nor is there any indication from the Biden camp that he has any interest in dropping out or any intention of dropping out. So he will be the Democratic nominee again, you know, excluding or assuming there's no sort of exident health issue or what have you. On the Republican side, I President Trump obviously has an incredibly formidable lead in the polls, but this is actually a really important point. He his campaign is much more organized, i think by his own emission, than it was in twenty sixteen, and they have been systematic changing the delegate rules in the states in terms of how the state primaries allocate delegates to his benefit. So not only does he have this formidable lead in the polls, but he's also sort of changed the kind of the machinations behind the scenes in terms of how these delegates are allocated, and of course getting the nominations just a delegate game, So the fact that he's been changing these rules is to his benefit as well. So, I mean a lot would have to happen, I think tonight and over the next two months. Now. I think what we can show from even last night that voting behavior is the most important thing to look at and polls are not always right, and so particularly in Iowa and New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Those are the four the first contests, Lisa, and how we're guiding our clients is if Trump wins all of those, then he very likely is going to be the nominee. However, if there's somebody can test one of those that it could be easily become a two person race. But again sort of remains to be seen. In terms of tonight, it's really a race for number two DeSantis between and Haley. Yeah, I think we will see it be pretty pretty nasty and pretty ugly tonight. I'm looking forward to that debt a little bit. Nice Levie, thank you going to catch out you're one of the best. You're going to catch with a pimcot the vix at fourteen point eighty four. That is a Dana Ives market you, Senior Equity Research Channal web Bush. You refuses to talk to us when Apple learnings come out. We only get them to pick up the debris and we can tell for those of you on radio, you can understand these long Lily Pulitzer as well. This morning. Great, Look, Dan, I want to talk about your two forty call on Apple. You're not lonely. There's a few other people out there with dana Ives optimism on Apple. When I saw those margins and a company managing for profit not revenue growth, can you raise your two forty estimate? Yeah? Look, I think this is just the beginning of the next fees of the Apple store. You look at margins that are historical. You look what's happening on services now mid teen growth, and I despite the haters continuing to hate, is growing even when you take out currency and you it's even growing more asps the China iPhone demise story is a fictional Netflix story, and in my opinion, this is just the start of what I ultimately view is at three and a half to four trillion dollar market. So slow day, we got to make some news here. Can you pop from two forty up to two fifty this morning for us? Look, I believe that I believe are the best case or the bowld case is probably closer to to seventy five as this all plays out, because also now you don't have AI in those numbers. This is just the get out the popcorn moment for when Apple ultimately I believe, over the next year, introduces the AI app Store, and that's just going to be you know, ultimately from a services perspective, that could be an incremental five to ten fifteen millions. You made a couple of statements, so let's stroke down on them. We can do that. Your friends, you talked about growth at the iPhone. What growth are you talking about? So if you unit growth, units are growing into the December quarter, you also if you take out currency, which is a headwind, you have basically mid single digit growth. You've been talking about a massive boom of people upgrading. I guess my questions you dan to be polite about it. Have you been right for the wrong reasons on the stock to acknowledge that? I would say that ultimately, if you look at this, what I've used a mini supercycle that's playing out. The ASP stories played out, and I think our biggest call has been China. Despite many yelling fire in a crowd theater, the China growth is actually increasing, not decreasing. But they had a down quarter right in China. Well, if you look at China, Meanli in China was actually a record for the September quarter. When you look at the overall, you know, as Keen talks about the initial reaction after sure iPads, max that and three dollars get your cup of coffee, I'm focused on iPhones where units were up in China. Well, I'm struggling with that. And you'll appreciate this. If you came on today and say margins it better they are. I'm with you, Okay, Margins are great service revenues where the growth is that deserves a high multiple. I understand that maybe you can make the case for why the stock is high this year based on those things. When you say things like iPhone supercycles, when we've had no growth for four quarters in the company, that's where I struggle. Can you have the understanding this? So it's dissect that first. When you're thinking about the card five six hundred BIPs f X headwinds, that is actually underlying growth that you're seeing an iPhone units. Just to steady state it. I also believe our whole view of the iPhone cycle is really going to be over the next three, four or five quarters. That's where you're going to have these upgrades that actually come through. I'm not saying that you don't have some maybe share minor share of Watses on the sort of mid tier, but in terms of high end as a utility, this essentially is going to be a mid to high single digit growth on iPhone, and when you start to run that through, that could be an incremental one two three dollars earnings As you look out next two three years. There's a lot of growth already baked into valuation, and a big piece of valuation is where the buyers are going to come from. And you've been traveling around the world trying to hold everyone's hand and convince them that there is still value in big tech. How much do the losses of other areas of the tech like sphere and I'm thinking of Masioshi's Sun and the more than eleven billion dollars loss on we work. How much does that play into a little ambivalence about buying the story right now. Look, I think you're definitely having winners and losers in terms of this just broader economy, and I think in terms of the Magnificent seven. In terms of big tech, I think the strong gets stronger. But he said, to my point, you know, being an easier for a few weeks, and in Europe, you know, it's very easy to sit there here in New York on your tenth floor spreadsheet being negative on Apple. What I see out in the world is a much different environment in terms of the growth that happening. And I believe tech to your point, you're going to see the strong continuing to dominate. And I think in terms of AI, we are just in the early stages of monetization. I think that's a big thing in this tech ball market. Microsoft saw it in terms of AI, you're starting now see monization data dog that's a Hall of Fame quarter in terms of what we saw there, pallenteer the messy of AI, and I believe ultimately right now the AI gold rush is actually starting. That sounds lovely on that side. On the side of how much we're paying for price monetization and monetization of AI, am looking at Apple plus in sort of the amount that though that's increased, are we going to be paying six hundred dollars a month to Apple for all of our various services? Look, I think over in there, But to your point, I think over the next year or two, I think the average Apple user is going to start to definitely increase what they're paying Apple on the services because ultimately, as it goes out, the A I technology that's gonna be in fitness health in the app store, that's just going to give them just another added growth to the monization of Coupertino. And I think part of why the stocks reacted, you know, despite you know many I think being very negative initially, as it's come through, you know, to Pharaoh's point, iPhone, you're now starting to see grow services mid teen growth margins. This is just another you know, flex and muscles moment. And I think that's on a sum of the parts, how this is a stock that Ultimate is gonna be a four trillion dollar markup by twenty twenty five. Just picking up on penalty the messy of Ai. Why why are they the messy of Ais? Because I believe they are the pures play AI name in the market period. And and look, Palenteer is one where you know, many have been negative on that story for a number of different reasons. But I think what you're seeing now happen is that they've actually parlayd enterprise success and you're seeing the use cases explode. I believe Palteerman twenty five is are a base case, but that is the golden child of AIS. I'm gonna make some news any day now. Do I see another massive, mega billion dollar Apple debt offering. Look, I think that's something that you know clearly, you know could be on the table. I think the bigger thing for Apple is I think they're finally going to look at M and A, and we've talked about I think we got to extend the in They're gonna buy Disney by by the week. I believe ESPN is the asset that Ultimate by Okay, you but for that, I think thirty five to forty billion in terms of what bates transaction, but it could not beats three and a half billion. But also it goes back to the MLS deal that was I think where the light bulb went off in terms of live streaming sports. I think ESPN is a unique ass And look right now, you look at the top of this mound, it's Nodella, it's cook, you know, it's You're really starting to see ultimately more of an opportunity where they could go on the offensive ratherland defense. Okay, it's good to see you. Thank you, buddy Dennice of web Bush. It's joining us to talk about just how bad of a time this is for this to hit. Alexander Goldfarb, Senior Research and Analystic Piper Sandler. I want to start there, Alexander. There've been talks discussions around the number of leases that we work is going to abandon. Is the pressure on commercial real estate office space in particular in New York is it overstated right now or understated? Well, good morning Lisa and Tom, and thank you for having me on you know here at Piper Sandler. When we look at what is going on in office, it's it's eerily similar to what happened with malls. You know, over the past decade. If you recall, everyone pre pandemic thought every single mall going to close because everyone was going to shop online, and in fact what happened is the dominant malls like the Roosevelt Fields or Houston Gallerias continue to excel and lesser malls fall away. The same thing is with office. So if you look at we Work, which we don't cover we Work, but if you look at some of the fallout out in San Francisco, they rejected a bunch of leases. They did not reject one lease from Boston properties. When you look in San Francisco, when you look in New York, you know, companies like s Green Bornado have zero exposure now to WE Work because they exited those we Work leases over the past number of years, and even Boston properties only as one percent. So when you look at the fallout that's going to happen, and you look at the major reats and especially the ones that we cover here at Piper Sandler, the impact is negligible. And what's really interesting is when you look at office, especially here in New York, it's gravitating around Grand Central, and actually you're seeing rents increase on Park Avenue. So just like MAUL, the dominant office will survive the lesser the generic office. That's where the trouble is. So are you saying right now that the prices have baked in a lot of that trouble or that people just haven't been discerning enough to understand the winners versus the losers. Absolutely. If you speak to the brokerage community like Newmark, they are starting, They and Cushman and the other brokerage companies are starting to discern the difference between top tier versus generic, Class A, class B, etc. So when you look at what tenants want today, tenants want, you know, great space with a lot of amenities, convenient, convenient for commuters, and they want a landlord who has the capital wherewithal to invest in the properties. And let's face it, the brokers want to get paid a commission and you're seeing that fallout. It's no different than we've seen in retail. So again I use the mall example, Simon Property Group, you know with their billion dollars a year from task, so tenants know that they can be there the same as happening in reats with companies like sl Green. That's right where I wanted to go, Alexander, you are reading my mind. What is David Simon going to do with this folks? Simon Property Group Indianapolis three thousand employees. What is the guy from Indiana University can do? He's seen this before we come down. But my history is fresh money always comes in. When does the fresh money click in? If transaction to transaction, I'm down forty percent. Well, you are speaking David's mind. He loves cash flow. So since IPO, the company's paid out thirty nine billion in dividends, and the reason they've done that is by investing shrewdly. So when you look right now, he's very focused on investing in his malls. So apart from the Tallman acquisition, which was structured before the pandemic, he hasn't bought anything on the outside. His focus has been investing in the malls like out in Northgate and Sea out Of where they're converting it into a hockey arena, or Houston Gallera where they're adding office and apartments, etc. So that's where he's focused. But let's face it, given the challenges away from Simon. He can pick and choose. But if you look, he's making a ton of money out of his portfolio, which people forget is actually small. It's only one hundred and twenty malls and only two hundred or so domestic properties in total. So he's a large company but with a small powerhouse portfolio, right, Ben Alison, I got to make some headlines here. We're in the business and news, Alexander. There's blood on the streets. We see it in New York, and I get it. New York's its own little weird place, but there's all across the nation real estate blood on the streets. Are you saying your world of reats back to when you were at Lehman, your world of reads? Is it now a screaming by because of all the agony Lisa was just framing, So it's not a screaming buy in the sense that interest rates are high. Right, we have a tenure that was approaching five percent and it's now backed off a little. But certainly the financing market, which as you guys have reported, is basically shut down, right, CNBS market is tough. You walk into a bank and try to get a construction loan, they'll call the cops on you. They're like, we don't do that right now. Right, So lending is very tough. The transaction market is almost on ice because of the widespread what's interesting people missing? Tom, You're like my first boss at Liam and David Shulman. You've been around a number of decades. Real estate right now is benefiting from a phenomena that it has not had in a long long time, which is low supply because nothing new is getting built, and low vacancy. That combination is really powerful. And you started the show by saying, how is the credit going to get worked out? Again? As you as we've spoken before, back in the GFC, everyone was panicked about the CNBS. No one can tell you where the benchmark GG ten? What happened to that famous twenty two thousand and seven feel right, stuff gets worked out, Obviously there will be pain, there will be blood, for sure. But if you look at real estate's biggest benefit right now, it's that lack of supply and low vocacy. That's a huge positive that is underappreciated by the market. Just about thirty seconds. What happens if there's for selling, akin to re work, so we work is a tenant, so you don't really have force selling from that. But to be clear, banks where everyone's focused on, they're not in the business a running real estate, right. So as long as it's a good asset with a good sponsor, they're going to work out some deal. Because, as the old adage goes, a rolling loan collects no loss. That said, there's clearly going to be assets that will go back to the lenders. And those are the assets where the economics don't exist. That's the stuff to worry about. But the big properties like the three ninety nine Parks, the one Vanderbilts, those big centers or are going to be fine. And again, when you look at where the value in real estate is, it's a crewing at the top. But you're right there will be blood, and the blood it's going to be generic assets. Alexander Brilliant, Alexander Goldfire years of work at Piper Sandler now on real estate investment trust. Subscribe to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live every weekday starting at seven am Eastern. I'm Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app. Tune in and the Bloomberg Business App. You can watch us live on Bloomberg Television and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. Thanks for listening. I'm Tom Keane, and this is BloombergSee 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The stage is set, the mic is on, and the cue is yours. In this episode, stand-up comic and voice actor Tom Sawyer shares his golden nuggets for aspiring voice talents hoping to benefit from the power of comedy. From the importance of having fun in the booth to taking a well-deserved break, and the power of belief in oneself, Tom is a reservoir of invaluable insights. We talk about standing out in a sea of talents, catching the ears of the right casting person, and the art of continuous learning. But remember, feedback is the breakfast of champions, and as Tom says, it's all about enhancing your performance. Get ready, it's showtime! About Tom   Tom Sawyer ran lengendary San Francisco comedy club, Cobb's for over 30 years. After stepping away from the comedy business, Tom was encouraged to explore voice acting by after famed comedian and voice actor Carlos Alazraqui (Rocco's Modern World, the Taco Bell Chihuahua) who knew Tom was an excellent celebrity impersonator. Tom signed with JE Talent in San Francisco and Aperture Talent in Los Angeles in 2017, and the rest is history. https://kitcaster.com/tom-sawyer/ 0:00:01 - Announcer It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a V-O boss. Now let's welcome your host, Ann Gangusa.  0:00:20 - Anne Hey everyone, welcome to the V-O Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza and today I am super excited to be here with very special guest actor, comedian, entrepreneur oh my God, the list goes on Tom Sawyer. Tom ran the legendary San Francisco Comedy Club Cubs for over 30 years booking legendary greats, and this list just goes on and on, but I'll give you just a few of them Jerry Seinfeld, dana Carvey, Bob Saget, Jim Carrey, Rita Rudner, Joe Rogan, Sarah Silverman and the list just goes on. He stayed on as a booker until 2012 and then ultimately stepped away from the comedy business. After that, he was encouraged to explore voice acting by famed comedian and voice actor Carlos Ellsrocki, a good friend of his. He signed on with JE Talent in San Francisco and Aperture Talent in LA in 2017, and the rest, they say, is history.  But boy, we've got a lot of history I'd like to talk to you about, tom. Thank you so much for joining us and welcome. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. So, gosh, there's so many things I want to start with. I mean the first tell. You have such a large history of comedy, so, of course, I'm sure a very common question you get asked is were you a funny kid, or have you always loved comedy? What is it that drew you to comedy?  0:01:44 - Tom Well, yeah, I was the kid in the back of the class making all the other kids laugh, so that was where I started and I always did impressions. So when I was a kid I was doing Don Adams from Get Smart and Ed Sullivan and Richard Nixon and you know, it's probably a little weird seeing an eight-year-old doing Richard Nixon but that's what I was doing. When I was very young I realized I could do voices and never stopped and that's what kind of led me to voiceover when I got out of the comedy club business.  0:02:15 - Anne But boy, there was a long history of being in the comedy business. I label you as entrepreneur 20 times over because I think just following that passion of yours and then ultimately opening up a club that literally was just famed and just housing some of the comedy greats. Tell me a little bit about that history. I mean, that is just so, so fun and impressive.  0:02:36 - Tom Yeah, actually, I went to San Francisco to become a stand-up comic and there were all these clubs, the Punchline and the Holy City Zoo and the other cafe. They were very packed all the time and getting stage time there was next to impossible. Or you'd get on at one o'clock in the morning in front of a very tired, very small, very drunk audience. And then there was this little.  0:02:55 - Anne Sometimes that helps, I'm not sure Mostly doesn't, oh okay.  0:03:00 - Tom But there was this little club in the Marina District in San Francisco called Cobb's Pub and they were trying to do comedy there and there was no audience, but there was stage time. You could get on stage there. In fact, sometimes you couldn't get off stage because there was no one there to take over, so you had to stretch, stretch and that was terrifying sometimes. Especially if you're the third or fourth comic going, hey, where are you from? And the audience goes we all know where we're from, so stop asking.  0:03:29 - Anne That's so funny. I just wanted to say that a lot of my actor friends I feel like being on that comedy stage is like a rite of passage almost, and it's probably I would think one of the toughest things to do is to stand on stage like that and try to make people laugh. I mean, that's just to me it's comedy without a net. Yeah, exactly.  0:03:48 - Tom And the thing is it's like you're stuck there, literally. You have an allotted time that you have to perform and they give you 10 minutes. You have to do 10 minutes, doesn't matter if it's horrible right from the word jump, you're on stage for those 10 minutes. That's the time you have to do and that's one of the things you learn right away is like if you get on stage early.  you're not going to get back on stage. So you have to go through the rite of passage of bombing, and I've seen comics bomb from Paula Poundstone, kevin Meany, kevin Nealon, the list goes on and on. Every comic has bombed. But even later on you get in front of an audience that just doesn't dig you.  0:04:27 - Anne And again, nowhere to go. You can't run off the stage.  0:04:31 - Tom You're mean, I get that.  0:04:38 - Anne And it's funny because I literally I just went to a comedy club a couple of weeks ago and I was thinking about that, like what do you do? I mean, they are there until the next comedian is called on stage. And it feels interesting as being a part of the audience, because a lot of times I think, as the audience, you are part of maybe not part of the act, but it's very interactive, it's very back and forth and engaging because, of course, you're trying to make us laugh.  0:05:02 - Tom Yeah, you have to communicate to the audience without really engaging the audience, because you're the boss on stage, you're kind of like the crowd master and you're crowd control and entertainment at the same time. And because comedy, some people feel like, oh, I'm going to be as funny as the comic.  0:05:22 - Anne And that's when things get really sideways.  0:05:24 - Tom You're there to be entertained. Sit back, relax and leave the talking or the driving to the person with the microphone.  So you got some stage time on Cobbs and and then I realized that I just kept seeing these shows that weren't very good. The guy who was booking the club at the time wasn't doing a great job, and I was a big fan of stand up as well. So I started thinking about what I would do instead, and then I started telling the owner at the time first owner of Cobbs. I was telling him you know, here's what I would do differently, and then I could tell him at the beginning of the show how the show was going to fail. And then he was started realizing that everything I was saying was happening and he went what do I get to lose? We're doing horrible business. And so he gave me the job of booking and from there I started getting the people I really, really like to perform and it started going great and we went from being like about 20% capacity to 90% capacity in about a year.  0:06:23 - Anne So let me ask you a question that, to me, is very interesting how do you get, at the time, the talents that you booked? I mean, they were big names. Were they big names then? And how did you get them to book? I mean, that's a skill, right? It's something that we do in our businesses every day, right? We've got to try to get clients to like us and to work with us. So how did you do that? Did you have a secret?  0:06:42 - Tom Yeah, my secret was I paid really well.  0:06:45 - Anne Okay, okay, that's a good piece.  0:06:48 - Tom My biggest competition, which was twice the size of our club. We were out paying that Because we decided that the most important thing was getting butts in the chairs and the only way to do that was having acts that actually brought an audience. So the only way to do that was to offer these guys more of an opportunity to make more money. So we would give them a percentage of the door and say, hey, the more people come to see you, the more you're gonna make. And because of that we had people that would call up and go, hey, I'm gonna be on the Tonight Show in six weeks with Johnny Carson, do you have anything open? And I would move stuff around and get them in there and then I would get a Tonight Show plug or a Letterman plug or Arsenio Hall. At the time and that was kind of my thing was I'm gonna pay everybody. Really well, so everybody could. Percentage of the door.  In the early days before all the big agencies came in, sure, and remember this was at a time where there were just like a couple agencies doing personal appearances for comedians. Comedians were pretty much on their own. They were doing their business themselves. So if I wanted Bob Sagan, I'd call Bob Sagan, so I get his number from another comic and everybody was kind of looking for each other and I would bring one comic in. They'd go, hey, you should book these guys. And I go, okay, great, and call them up. And they'd go, right, when can you give them me a date? And I'd give them a date. Plus, we flew people up and we put them up in the hotels. So we didn't personally make a ton of money. That wasn't my thing. My thing was having the best shows I could possibly have and making a name right.  And making a name for the club?  0:08:24 - Anne Absolutely, and that's interesting because, again, I like to talk about the entrepreneurial business side of what we do as creatives and freelancers, and there's a lot of thinking outside the box and also recognizing the value of the talent, that if you wanna put out great work, then you wanna hire a talent that's amazing and great and pay them fairly and absolutely. And so talk to me a little bit about the networking aspect. I mean, the cash is a good draw, but you also had to communicate effectively, I would say, to really book these talent.  0:08:58 - Tom Well, the thing that separated me from everybody else, besides being generous with the money that was brought in, was that I knew what they were going through, no matter what it was going on on stage. If they were dealing with a heckler, I'd gone through that as a comedian. If they were bombing, I knew that pain, so I could empathize with them, I could be their counselor, I could give them advice. I looked at it like I wasn't really a good comedian, and mainly that was because I wasn't true to who I am personally. So my mantra after that was be yourself.  0:09:32 - Anne I love that.  0:09:33 - Tom Yeah, that's who I wasn't. I was trying to fit in and have everybody like me and that really affected the quality of my stand up because I wasn't being true to me. So that was my mantra to everybody be yourself. Because nobody can take that away from you.  0:09:49 - Anne That's so interesting because I never ventured into comedy myself. However, I find that people find me the most funny when I am being my dorky self and I'm making mistakes and I'm just being oops, sorry, and I think in voiceover as well. I wanna talk more about that. I think it's all about being authentic and being yourself and that's really, I think, what connects you to people and engages you to people and endears you to people.  0:10:14 - Tom Yeah, I think it's really important when you get a job, and especially if it's somebody you want to get more bookings from play around, have fun. I mean, I booked a video game and the first thing we did we went through several of the lines I had to do and then we went through all those and I just did just the lines, basically no acting or anything like that and they went. Yep, that's about it. I went great, thank you.  0:10:33 - Anne Love it, love it, bye, bye.  0:10:35 - Tom So everybody started laughing. It loosens everybody up and that's really it's just. Don't be a pain on the ass. Realize that you're always learning. They're always learning. Everybody's a professional too, and so be courteous and nice and smart and be entertaining. You are the talent, so show some talent as a professional as well.  0:10:53 - Anne Show some talent. I love that. So talk about in the transition while booking talent. So you did that for a very long time, I mean 30 years, and so, wow, I mean, was there a point? I mean, were you just so busy for 30 years Did you think about voiceover? Was that a thought in your head or something that you would do, or you just were completely. You loved running the club and booking talent.  0:11:18 - Tom Prior to moving to San Francisco, I lived in Florida, lived in Sarasota, Florida, and I did a lot of theater there.  That's why, I fell in love with theater and acting. You know, I always thought like, oh, stand up might be a good gateway to getting into acting, but then I got into the business end of it. So I didn't really think about it until I got out and I didn't know what I was gonna do. And I was talking to Carlos and he said dude, you do so many voices and stuff. You'd be great at voice acting.  Cause I've always done impressions, never stopped doing impressions. In fact I would teach other people like Kevin Pollack or something, if they had an oppression and they couldn't figure it quite out. They were doing it but they weren't quite right. We'd kind of jam and help them get there, or they would help me get there and we'd all do our really weird outside the box impersonations. You'd have to spend five minutes explaining who that guy is Right right right.  0:12:07 - Anne So you can't do that one.  0:12:09 - Tom But for comics, we love doing those, especially impersonators, impressionists, we love doing those for other impersonators. It was kind of like our jazz moment, you know, where you get to jam behind the scenes with another musician.  0:12:20 - Anne Absolutely.  0:12:21 - Tom So Frank Calliendo, I had the club, and Dana Carvey, of course, was the master of the not perfect impression, but getting the perfect funny it didn't matter, that's what his genius is. Bye, you know, is finding the perfect funny to any voice. And then Tom Kenny played. The club started at Cobbs as well Again, the guy who did so many crazy voices. It was another inspiration for me to move there, and every once in a while I talked to him, cause I'll get a audition for something that I know is directing or in, so I go heads up and he's going dude.  I have nothing to do with casting, you know sometimes they cast people and I'm scratching my head. So yeah, but I'll put in a good word for you.  0:12:58 - Anne So Well, hey again, networking totally helps. Now comedy skill. I think comedy is a skill and art form. What are your thoughts on that?  0:13:07 - Tom I mean cause, oh, absolutely.  0:13:08 - Anne Yeah, it's not something that I can go on a stage and execute.  0:13:11 - Tom Yeah, it's like anything else I personally believe.  my philosophy is we all have a gift somewhere along the line. We might not be in a position ever to know what that gift is, but we all have a gift and sometimes there are people out there have more than a couple fair, but there's also people who just don't ever find theirs. And I think that the idea is you know to try to discover who you are and your strengths, weaknesses. Stay away from those weaknesses and hurdle towards your strengths, you know, and don't get locked up into one thing to always be on the road to discovery.  0:13:42 - Anne I guess I want to ask you first of all about once you got into voice acting and then was it like you were always wanting to book a certain genre because you've had lots of characters inside of you that wanted to come out? Or did you find any of the genres outside of character Interesting, because I'm a believer that you're a character in just about everything you do, even if you're doing e-learning.  0:14:05 - Tom Yeah, I always try to find a person, even when it's just one of those hey, you're a dad, or hey, you're a regular guy. Or I just had an audition yesterday where you're just a regular father, you know it's regular. But the line said something else, you know. So I gave one as what they were saying and then one. That's what I felt the lines were doing. It was a subtle difference, but it was a difference that maybe whoever put this together wants to see. If somebody figured it out, or they didn't know that's where they were going and they don't know. Sometimes they don't even know until they hear it.  So give them what you think they want, and then give them what they say they want.  0:14:39 - Anne So interesting. I guess I would talk to you then about writing right, especially now that you've transitioned in voice acting and you're given a script right, or you're given an audition and finding the humor. Sometimes there's subtleties in that humor, sometimes it's obvious. Are there telltale signs to look out for? And then, once you do see it, is there a specific way that you feel it should be performed? Should it be performed in the obvious way? Or maybe, if you wanna capture the ear of the casting director, you do something different?  0:15:08 - Tom Well, I think you know what you do with a couple takes is you do the one that's on the page and then you do the one that where you think they go or where you can go with it to show what you can bring to the party. I always like to find the humor in something, especially if it says it's humorous, you know, and then play around with it and add a little bit, do a little improv with it, find a little spontaneity into there, or sometimes I'll even rewrite a line, cause I think it's kind of like flat, so I'll make it a little funnier. A punchier.  0:15:36 - Anne Okay, now that gives me a segue into a question In terms of with the script, in terms of improv right For an audition, are you improving in the audition and or improving the line, and at what point do you feel that people may go too far if you're completely rewriting, or do you think that's offensive maybe?  0:15:54 - Tom I think you have to be pretty subtle in rewriting. I think you do run the risk of people going why do I bother sending you a script? Cause you're adding all this stuff to it. So you pick and choose your moments. You know I've done that before, I've added jokes. But I'll listen to it again and go okay, that's a little too much. Plus, I want to have them. I don't want the person thinking after the third one, is he gonna go back to the script or what you know. So I wanna pick and choose my moments and make sure that I think of the funniest, the ones that have the most oomph. You want them to land, and so era on the side of too few than too many.  0:16:33 - Anne Let's talk about character development for you, especially because you're an impressionist. So how can you take, let's say, and you don't necessarily wanna have a character that's just after a particular person, but you wanna develop it into your own character. Is there a formula or a process for that, in terms of developing new characters?  0:16:51 - Tom Well, I have a book of all the impersonations I do, well, a book with the impersonations I do. And then I have like one that's like the ones I do pretty right on, and the ones I do that are just kind of soft. I don't really have it down, but that's great because it's a character.  0:17:07 - Anne Do you have a number for that? Somebody wants to have how many characters in their arsenal, how many to build off of.  0:17:13 - Tom Every day that I can figure out how to do a different celebrity or something like that. I write it down in the book Cause it comes to you sometimes. I mean, when I figured out how to do Robin Williams, it just was an accident. It's one of those things where you find a word and all of a sudden. Then you find a place in your throat and you're doing it and you can't stop.  0:17:32 - Anne It's crazy so it just never stops. I love it, I love it.  0:17:37 - Tom So one day I did Robin for Robin and that didn't go so well, apparently I didn't know he doesn't like his voice, apparently being impersonated. You didn't like that. No, it's really a very awkward Cause. I thought it'd be a lot of fun.  0:17:50 - Anne Yeah, and that's interesting because I'm curious about that. You know, celebrities like their voices impersonated, or now we've got a whole another, a whole another digital thing to be thinking about, when voices might be impersonated or turned into right With synthetic voices. But that might be another podcast.  0:18:10 - Tom That's a little scary.  0:18:11 - Anne That's a scary one, absolutely.  0:18:13 - Tom The thing about it is is like the flaws, like, let's say, go back to Dana Carvey, cause again there aren't many that he does right on, he'll leave me be the first to admit it. He's not like somebody like Frank Caliendo, who's just like amazing. He's verbatim, you can hear the voice. He's somebody who can do a sound alike. Dana could never do a sound alike, but he gets people's caricature down. That's the thing is it's like, and that's kind of what makes it funny is the imperfections is going up, finding those words.  I just, you know, I used to do Bruce Stern and a lot of people kind of forgot who he was, and then one day I just was doing it for somebody to just start laughing Cause they didn't even remember who that Bruce Stern was. But it's just his voice is funny, you know, cause he has a kind of voice like that and it's very inquisitive either. Everything goes up at the end Doesn't make a darn gosh darn bit of difference, and not sometimes he gets crazy. But and so you find those little imperfections actually make a character and make it really funny. That's what I like to do. You know, I did a animation pilot and it was like a hippie character and I was going through a bunch of voices with a writer cause they booked me and they didn't feel like they wanted to do something different with it. They said what can you do? And I was going through my book and I started doing Nick Nolte and they loved it and then you ended up going with that over what they originally had, with me doing it.  0:19:37 - Anne So I love how you have a book with everything written down. Now, do you also have audio files that go along with that, so that you can help yourself get into words?  0:19:45 - Tom Yeah, I have one where it's all my impressions, so that way I can go back. And how do I do that? One Cause I don't practice them all the time. Cause.  0:19:54 - Anne I have life.  0:19:55 - Tom So, and I don't want to be walking around talking to myself, of course, of course. Man, it's got so many voices.  0:20:00 - Anne So are you writing down then the name and then you write down the qualities of the characteristics or how you get into it. Is it a kick phrase? Maybe that gets you into the character.  0:20:10 - Tom Well, there's certain words, for example, you know, I came up with for Christopher Walk and I came up with the word pantaloon being the perfect Christopher Walken word. I'm thinking cowbell but that's yeah, cause. Well, that's, this is before cowbell yeah, before cowbell.  0:20:26 - Anne But pantaloon automatically gets me there. I love it. I love it Cause I say it.  0:20:33 - Tom I can't help but do more. Christopher Walken, who doesn't like a nice pair of pantaloons?  0:20:43 - Anne I love it. I love it.  0:20:44 - Tom Cause you want your calves exposed. So yeah, and then with Kurt Douglas, it was horse, oh Horse, okay, I'm going to read my horse. If I say horse, I go into Kurt Douglas Well.  0:21:01 - Anne I think there's something always so obviously so entertaining, but something that just draws people to comedy. What are your thoughts about this crazy, chaotic world that we live in today, and where does comedy sit now, I mean, in terms of how important is it?  0:21:17 - Tom I think comedy is as important as it ever was. And it's in a weird place right now, cause I think a lot of people are reacting to people saying words and there's a lot of people getting offended easily and comedy is not for those folks that have thin skin, both sides of it.  I find it funny that I think a lot of comics right now have thin skin as far as getting some criticism back, cause it's also about growth. What was funny in 1970, if you listened to comedy in 1970 or the 80s, it's not as funny now. In some of it's just not funny at all. We grow, we expand, we move on, and to me, that's what's great about comedy is it's about adapting. You're always adapting. You're always growing, as you should be as a person. So to me, if you're moving the ball forward constantly in your life, you're gonna be a better person than you were 10 years ago. So why not take that to comedy? Absolutely, the things that were funny like 15, 20 years ago are real cringy right now, and it's not because they weren't funny back then. They were. It's the same reason I get upset with people who go back like 20 years and go. I can't believe you said that back then.  0:22:28 - Anne Well, back then that wasn't offensive.  0:22:30 - Tom Exactly, we didn't find that offensive back then. Now we've all grown up and we've all moved on a bit and we understand that's not the same. But don't punish me for something that was okay Back then. Mark Twain, who wrote a famous book about a guy named Tom Sawyer, had a lot of cringy stuff in his books. There's still masterworks of literature, but those were the times. We have to accept. That's where those books came and there were a reflection of those times. Same way we would stand up. So to me it's just about. Everybody just needs to grow up. Everybody needs to understand where everybody was back then and where they are now and be better for them.  0:23:06 - Anne Yeah, yeah. Do you find that you miss owning a comedy club or booking talent or having that in your life?  0:23:12 - Tom I miss working with young comics. That's the thing I miss the most and it was actually when I started. The last version of Cubs when it exists now, because it's a 400-seat room has really amazing acts, but they're much bigger acts and they generally bring their own acts with them, and comedians who can bring their own acts generally don't bring really really great acts because they don't want to have to work as hard. I would make comics work hard because I would have really good acts going on before them.  Sure, so they have to try to continually stand tall, so they had to keep their game. My thing was like Interesting strategy. I like that yeah yeah, absolutely Nobody could coast. And then later on it was comics they would bring in.  I didn't think they were as talented as some of the people I could book with these guys, and so I wasn't really working with the comics anymore as much as I used to, and so that's one of the things about smaller room is you can get to work with younger comics and you get to tell them the dos and the don'ts and hopefully guide them to a path where they can be their best selves on stage. Sure, that part I miss.  0:24:14 - Anne And actually, speaking of that, what sort of advice would you give to voice talent out there that want to continually up their game and stay on top of the voiceover game, because, boy, it's competitive out there, super competitive.  0:24:27 - Tom It's crazy, it's crazy.  0:24:29 - Anne Like just as I'm sure it was in comedy and being in the club. It's such a mental game a lot of the times too.  0:24:34 - Tom Yeah, the nice thing about voiceover having been a stage actor very early in my life is you don't see the person who you're auditioning for, so you don't see that look, as soon as you hit the stage, that you've already lost your audition. You're not the person they're looking for, and that's so disheartening sometimes so at least you go into every audition with this could?  0:24:56 - Anne be the one.  0:24:57 - Tom And I love auditioning, so I love going into another character or finding something I haven't found before, or even sometimes there's a couple of characters I do that I think, oh man, this one is definitely gonna find a home someplace. It's just a matter of getting in front of the right casting person hearing it. So I'll bring out those guys every now and then, when it's the right opportunity for those characters, cause they're like they're my buddies. I want them to succeed. Yeah, I think just have fun in the booth is the main thing, and if you need to take a break, tell your agent I need to take a break. I mean, I talked to other voice actors and it gets a little depressing. Everybody came in this business thinking that everybody always said I should be in voice acting and everybody always said this is what I should be doing and I did it and nothing's happening.  0:25:43 - Anne Yeah, what's your advice for that? Because that becomes like a mind game. It becomes like oh my God, I've done all this work, what else can I do? I mean, what would you suggest in terms of getting work? It seems like the question I get most often as a coach is like so all right, I've got this great demo now and had this great coaching, and so now, where's the work? How do I get the work? Or how do I stand out?  0:26:04 - Tom I think the thing about it is acting as a lottery. You're buying a lottery ticket is what you're doing. I mean, carlos Alice Rocky was a comic Lucky, had a job, state entertainment state creative, but it was getting the Taco Bell, chihuahua and all those people you auditioned from and he hit it, hit the lottery, you know so, and from there he's done so many other things. But when I say who Carlos Alice Rocky is, when I bring him up, I always go the Taco Bell, chihuahua guy and they go oh, I love that. So it's the same thing where you just go, my lottery ticket is gonna come and you're gonna believe in yourself.  When you believe in your talent and talk to other people in the business too. Just do classes I think it's still a good idea to do, just as even a workout session. Plus, you get some inspiration from other people who have a different style, maybe that you see something in yourself or you bring out something in yourself you didn't know was there. So I would say, take a class every now and then network with other people who just to have support, just so, hey, I'm here for you when you're down on yourself, in the same way that if I need somebody to talk to and say, hey, I'm really kind of wondering what the hell I'm doing here.  And they can talk you down from being sad or lift your spirits up and let you know you're really a talented person. That's why you got into this whole thing in the first place.  0:27:16 - Anne Yeah, I think that self-sabotage can happen to the best of us even.  0:27:20 - Tom And then sometimes you'll hear it in the reads. I mean, again, I'll go into a class and you can tell the person who's been beat down on pretty bad by themselves, mostly Cause do you have an agent? Yeah, do you have a demo? Yeah, well, you're doing all the right things and I think it's good to have an agent or two that are giving you good feedback or giving you feedback.  0:27:40 - Anne I was with an agency that way too many people.  0:27:43 - Tom The poop sticks agency you have 400 people that they represent and you just go. That's too many. I don't feel special when you're just going okay.  You got a demo, you're in. So I think, being with a smaller agency, that's a little more hands-on. Both my agents give me feedback every time, even if it's just a nice job. Yeah, and because of that I feel like I'm better for it, because I already know if I see a script, I know exactly what kind of read in the ballpark I need to be, so that's what I'm gonna get back. I'm at the point now where I really get back oh, you need to do this, this is too much, and something like that. So it's always I recognize what I'm working with right away. I do it, get it out, get the feedback, forget about it.  0:28:26 - Anne That's what you gotta do. I think a lot of people really crave feedback in this industry because we are just in our studios, kind of just talking into our little four padded walls, and so a lot of times it's hard when you don't get feedback and it's interesting.  0:28:40 - Tom Yeah, especially if you don't have a partner in a relationship, you know where you can at least go hey, honey, what do you think of this?  0:28:47 - Anne Yeah, you can bounce it off.  0:28:48 - Tom I don't bother my wife with everything, but every once in a while, you know, I go. You know, what do you think of this? Or she'll hear me and she'll go. I need to hear the whole thing. She'll hear me in my booth screaming, you know. And then now she has to hear all the stuff I did in that character.  0:29:04 - Anne I love what you said about well, at least when you're in front of a stage, I can, you can get that reaction from the audience. You know that, if you've bombed or not already, and the fact that when you're in your studio you actually use the fact that you're not in front of an audience as a creative kind of positive outlook, that you can be creative and not have to face that which is so interesting from, let's say, somebody that doesn't necessarily or hasn't started from being on stage. They might've worked a corporate job and now all of a sudden they're getting into character acting, and so they don't have that perspective. So I really like that perspective of taking the challenge and I think the creativity has to be in your brain, your imagination. You have to imagine that character in that scene, which is so difficult for some people. Do you have any tips on how to really create a scene realistically while you're sitting here in your studio?  0:29:53 - Tom Yeah, I think the most important thing, especially when you get those video games where it's like one line, one line, one line, one line, five, one lines and they're like hey, don't touch that rock and you're going. How are these people going to book somebody based on five lines that are no more than 10 words for the longest one?  and you're going, how am I gonna stand out in front of anybody? So you gotta kind of create a scene around those and those. I generally will write a bigger scene for the line and then because I'll have the line in there and I'll make sure that it doesn't bleed into the other words that I'm saying, but that gives me a little bit more emotional pop for that line.  0:30:35 - Anne Are you developing the characters that you're interacting with as well?  0:30:38 - Tom I know who I'm talking to. Yeah, so I might not have the character fully developed, but I know who I'm talking to.  0:30:44 - Anne Right, and what's happening in that scene? And what's happening, yeah, and you actually write that down.  0:30:48 - Tom I'll go on Word, I'll cut and paste the lines and then I'll put words around the line and highlight the line that is actually in it. So I have all the other words and a highlighted line to make sure I hit that one. But I know what's going on and I try to create more around it.  0:31:05 - Anne So how long would you say do you spend, let's say, analyzing and doing all that work? How long would you say you take for an audition to kind of do that creating the scene and writing that down before you go in and record?  0:31:17 - Tom It depends on my schedule and what I have to do and also how much I think something is really in my wheelhouse. I mean there's things you get where it's like I knock it out in 10 minutes because I really have a solid idea of what I'm gonna do with it and I go and do it and I listen to. It sounds good. With characters, though, with video games and animation, I really like to do as much as I possibly can. I remember I did this video game audition where the character was cockney. I called my dialect coach and we went through the whole thing together.  It was like a class for me. I thought this was a good opportunity to have a little class on doing a cockney accent and I said can I book our session with you? And we just worked on the script I was auditioning for because I really I loved it and I really wanted to nail it and, regardless, I got a class out of it. So it did two things for me helped me learn, and I put that learning to immediate use.  0:32:11 - Anne Absolutely absolutely.  0:32:13 - Tom And again, that's a really good thing to do is have a network of people, find a good dialect coach, find people that are teachers or coaches that you can work with, that you can go to and use them when you need, when you're stuck or when you just need something. Had a Pixar audition that I did and the character was obviously somebody from Eastern Europe and I had a friend who's from Ukraine and we went through the script and she helped me with some of the pronunciations and I didn't book it but I really felt confident sending it in.  0:32:45 - Anne I really felt like I nailed it Exactly. I love that because you've gotten the worth out of it, whether you booked it or not. So that's the other thing. So when you really are excited about something and you do all that work and you feel like you nailed the audition, but then you didn't book it, thoughts on how to stop that from getting you all upset and, oh my God, that's it.  0:33:03 - Tom Well, it's sort of like you still have to go. This is out of my control. I have no idea what the other person at the other end is going through what they've got in front of them. If they end up going with somebody that they've already booked for something and they can give them another character because union rules and it's like you did a really good job, maybe even better than that person but they're already booked and they don't have to pay another person to do that voice. They can do up to three voices and not get a penny more. So they go. Let's just give them that, so you don't know all the little things that transpire for somebody to get that part over you.  0:33:35 - Anne Yeah, and I think it's important for people to understand that it doesn't necessarily reflect on a poor performance or a poor audition.  0:33:42 - Tom No, my agent is a very funny woman and my auditions who I'm getting in front of have escalated. I'm doing more Disney Pixar auditions and stuff like that and she just goes. You're feeling upwardly.  0:33:53 - Anne There you go. I love that.  0:33:56 - Tom Which I thought was hilarious, because we always think we're failing. We're not. We're all doing the best we can and we're all doing great auditions. But because I'm doing so well in my auditions, other casting people are getting interested, so I am getting in front of people that I didn't get in front of, like four or five years ago.  0:34:12 - Anne Awesome, that's awesome. So even if you don't book the job, you could be making an impression on someone that can get you maybe the next job or the job after that.  0:34:21 - Tom That's the idea. They go well.  I really like that because you don't know, when I was booking COBS I would get DVDs and before that VHSs of comedians from around the country. We were very well known so I would get them from New York, boston, other parts of the country and they'd just pile up on my desk because it was excruciating for me at some times. So then at one point, when they were ready to fall over, I would just start watching them. In the beginning I would watch two or three minutes of somebody. Then it came down to just 30 seconds to a minute, because you know right away and that's how I'm sure it is for casting people.  0:34:56 - Anne You know right away if there's talent or if they were gonna be bookable absolutely or if they're right or wrong.  0:35:01 - Tom You might like them and you might wanna listen to the whole thing and you would go ah, they're just not quite right. I need a little bit of a younger voice. This is obviously somebody who's an older voice and I think it's really. I mean, I try to do what I can and have as much fun as I can, because there's gonna be probably 10 years down the road where this voice isn't gonna sound the same and I'll be doing grandpas and wizards.  0:35:22 - Anne So yeah, our voices do change as they age. I have experienced that myself. I certainly sound a whole lot different than I did 10 years ago. Well, well, this has been an amazing discussion, Tom. I so appreciate you taking the time and just dropping all these wonderful tips and tricks and words of wisdom for the boss listeners out there.  0:35:45 - Tom Yeah, yeah, have fun kids. That's the message.  0:35:47 - Anne There you go. I love that. So, bosses, I want you to take a moment and imagine a world full of passionate and powered, diverse individuals giving collectively and intentionally to create the world that they wanna see. You can make a difference. Find out more at 100voiceshoocareorg. And a big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can network and connect with amazing people like Tom. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.  0:36:18 - Outro Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Ann Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL.  Transcribed by https://podium.page  

Často se říká, že 3D tisk je pomalý a drahý. Tomáš Soóky, spoluzakladatel a šéf firmy 3Dwiser, která dodává průmyslové 3D tiskárny, však sype z rukávu příklady, kdy může firmám zachránit miliony. "Nůžky mezi tradičními výrobními metodami a 3D tiskem se budou postupně uzavírat. Ale zase si nemyslím, že 3D tisk úplně nahradí CNC obrábění. Nehodí se úplně na všechno. Je však otázkou času, než se méně kritické komponenty začnou vyrábět i pro automobily sériově na 3D tiskárnách," říká Soóky. Nyní 3D tisk zažívá boom ve vojenství. "Jednou ze zásadních výhod 3D tisku je, že si vytisknete kdy, kde a co konkrétně potřebujete. Využívá se to při obraně, v bojových liniích, kde zásobování představuje velký problém. Mohou to být například méně komplikované díly pro poškozené drony, rychlé opravy technologie či zdravotní přípravky," dodává Soóky.A co se ještě dozvíte:- kde všude se už dnes používá 3D tisk, v jakých oborech se běžně prosazuje k výrobě finálních dílů- jak se využívá 3D tisk ve zdravotnictví a v čem konkrétně pomáhá v pražském IKEM- kde se 3D tisk uplatňuje v automobilovém průmyslu a jak se využívá při preventivní a havarijní údržbě- zda se dá na 3D tiskárně tisknout z čehokoliv, z jakéhokoliv materiálu, jaké nové technologie se v oboru objevují- jak si stojí průmyslové využití 3D tisku v Česku při srovnání se Západem či Čínou- kam směřuje vývoj v samotných 3D tiskárnách, v čem se vylepšuje a jak se zvyšuje počet patentů v této oblasti- jak je to s udržitelností a recyklovatelností výrobků vytvořených na 3D tiskárnách- proč se Soóky před takřka deseti pustil do vlastního podnikání, jaké byly jeho začátky a jak si firma vede nyníTento díl podcastu Na vlně podnikání moderuje Martin Petříček, zástupce šéfredaktora týdeníku Ekonom.

Často se říká, že 3D tisk je pomalý a drahý. Tomáš Soóky, spoluzakladatel a šéf firmy 3Dwiser, která dodává průmyslové 3D tiskárny, však sype z rukávu příklady, kdy může firmám zachránit miliony. "Nůžky mezi tradičními výrobními metodami a 3D tiskem se budou postupně uzavírat. Ale zase si nemyslím, že 3D tisk úplně nahradí CNC obrábění. Nehodí se úplně na všechno. Je však otázkou času, než se méně kritické komponenty začnou vyrábět i pro automobily sériově na 3D tiskárnách," říká Soóky. Nyní 3D tisk zažívá boom ve vojenství. "Jednou ze zásadních výhod 3D tisku je, že si vytisknete kdy, kde a co konkrétně potřebujete. Využívá se to při obraně, v bojových liniích, kde zásobování představuje velký problém. Mohou to být například méně komplikované díly pro poškozené drony, rychlé opravy technologie či zdravotní přípravky," dodává Soóky.   A co se ještě dozvíte: - kde všude se už dnes používá 3D tisk, v jakých oborech se běžně prosazuje k výrobě finálních dílů - jak se využívá 3D tisk ve zdravotnictví a v čem konkrétně pomáhá v pražském IKEM - kde se 3D tisk uplatňuje v automobilovém průmyslu a jak se využívá při preventivní a havarijní údržbě - zda se dá na 3D tiskárně tisknout z čehokoliv, z jakéhokoliv materiálu, jaké nové technologie se v oboru objevují - jak si stojí průmyslové využití 3D tisku v Česku při srovnání se Západem či Čínou - kam směřuje vývoj v samotných 3D tiskárnách, v čem se vylepšuje a jak se zvyšuje počet patentů v této oblasti - jak je to s udržitelností a recyklovatelností výrobků vytvořených na 3D tiskárnách - proč se Soóky před takřka deseti pustil do vlastního podnikání, jaké byly jeho začátky a jak si firma vede nyní   Tento díl podcastu Na vlně podnikání moderuje Martin Petříček, zástupce šéfredaktora týdeníku Ekonom.

What would it look like if you could harness the energy of a conference and convert it into effectiveness? What would it feel like to be your own boss in the voiceover industry? Our esteemed guest, Tom Dheere, joins us as we unravel the answers to these thought-provoking questions. We share valuable insights on setting the right objectives, maximizing conference experiences, and the commitment required to become a full-time voice actor. Plus, we examine the liberating perspective of entrepreneurial freedom offered by the voiceover industry. 0:00:01 - Anne Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the real boss series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza and I am so happy to bring to this series Mr Tom Dheere. Thank you so much, tom, for joining me on this.   0:00:15 - Tom Yay, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited about this. This is going to be great.   0:00:19 - Anne Oh, tom, first of all, it was so awesome to see you at the One Voice conference.   0:00:25 - Tom Yes, likewise.   0:00:27 - Anne I know we just had. You were just a guest on my podcast and, lo and behold, like two times I see you within the span of a month or two, which is really incredible, right?   Sometimes we have to go to conferences to just meet in person so whew, I was exhausting that conference, but super motivating, and I know a lot of people who went to that conference are all revved up and ready to go, motivated, inspired. We took amazing classes and so I think it's a good time to talk about. You know, what do we do with all that amazing energy that we just absorbed in that conference? Because I'm revved up, I'm motivated, ready to go. What can we do to, I guess, keep ourselves or keep the momentum going, tom?   0:01:16 - Tom That is a fantastic question and I know you've been presented at dozens and dozens of conferences over the past 10 years, and so have I, and we go and we meet wonderful people and we present and we also attend workshops and panels and we learn a lot and we get to commiserate with our peers, voice actors and coaches and other producers and stuff like that. And then there's this glow.   0:01:42 - Anne There is a glow. It's wonderful glow. There is a glow.   0:01:46 - Tom And then you go home and then for the vast majority of people that go to these conferences, it's like whew.   0:01:53 - Anne And then life sets in right. I have laundry to do. Yeah, family, yeah, right Bills and auditions and stuff like that.   0:02:02 - Tom So it's great. Conferences are great for, obviously for education. They're great for networking, they're great for renewal of purpose, refocus, re-energizing. The trick is how to take all that positive energy and inspiration and revved up-ed-ness and coming, taking it home with you and turning it into effectiveness. Because the positive attitude, while great it can only get you so far, it's not going to get you home. You're going to run out of that momentum and now there's work to be done.   0:02:37 - Anne Interesting, tom. Before we went to the conference, I think somebody had actually created a note sheet of like here are the I guess the talks that I want to go to, here are my goals, or here's what I got out of it, and I thought it was a really great way for people who like that type of thing and they take a lot of notes to write down your objectives. What are you hoping to get from that? And then what do you hope to do once you get, maybe once you get home, to put those lessons learned in place? And so I think that maybe everything should start even before we go to the conference in terms of writing things down and what is it that you hope to get out of this conference. And I'm a big planner, so I am a big proponent of yeah, you guys should plan out what sessions you want to go to, look at the schedule multiple times and just see how you can get the most out of the money that you've spent on that ticket of yours.   0:03:33 - Tom Yeah, absolutely, and different people at different points in their voiceover journey go to different conferences for different reasons, if it's. I've never been one to been one to one before, and I just want to. I haven't even produced a demo yet. I just want to see what this universe is like.   0:03:47 - Anne Great.   0:03:48 - Tom If it's, this is my 15th conference. I've had all these demos done, I've gotten all this work. What am I going to get out of it this time? Or some people go because they specifically want to meet you, or they want to meet another coach or demo producer to see, I want to get in the same room with this person and see if we click because I may want to work with you as a coach or a demo producer. Um, you know, and some go purely as presenters and you know, and then they, you know, do their stuff and then they get out of there and yeah, which is which is which is cool too.   0:04:19 - Anne I think there's such a, there's such a momentum to be gained by just joining forces with like-minded people and, just you know, renewing um relationships, and that just keeps you going, because it's so isolating sometimes just what we do and yeah and I will tell you, though, that the other day I was I don't even know what it was that made me think of it, but I I think I was getting ready to, you know, start.   I had a full day of students, and I said, I don't know what made me think about, oh god, what if I had to go to work for somebody?   um, you know, back in my days of corporate and I'm like I I could never do that again. So boss is out there. This is just a little segue. If you, if, if you know that this is what you want to do and you end up pursuing it full time, I don't say rush into it with your, you know, with your eyes closed. But, um and Tom, we can talk lots of strategies about that, but once you make that decision to go full time, I don't do you know anybody who's actually gone back because they've been unhappy being their own boss um, I know lots of people who have gone back to a regular job because they just couldn't book enough right they needed the money.   0:05:24 - Tom Yeah, exactly, it was purely financially, like I've been trying this and I just, I just can't get enough work to sustain myself and they've come gone back. Um, I can't think of anyone specifically, but I'm sure there are people out there, because there are people who just like to be told what to do, because then they don't have to think about it and there's a level of security in that and I totally that's sympathize with that.   0:05:45 - Anne I'm not one of those people, I can't. I don't, I don't think I could, I could not go back to taking now, I think, now I can take. I can take instructions from my client. Sure, I can be directed um, and then I want to get paid and be done with it. I think that's really it's. It's an interesting. It's an interesting, it's a different dynamic, because that's a, that's a, that's a business to business thing where you and the clients are on equal footing there's no high. There's no hierarchy.   0:06:10 - Tom It's it's you and the client trying to make this finished, great finished product, which is, you know, the audio files that you're gonna send to them or their, their source connecting you through. But with what? When it's a, I am in charge of you and. I'm telling you what to do, and this is when you can go to the bathroom and stuff like that it's like ah, I don't know if I could.   0:06:29 - Anne I don't know, I don't think I could go back to that it makes me think of okay, it's similar to I know I just went off on that on that weird tangent, but that happens sometime, bosses, sorry, um, but it was just a weird like. It just came to me. I was like I could not work for somebody now, so I will do everything in my power to make my business so that I do not have to do that. I think that also was leading into that.   But I think isn't that similar to, let's say, I, I pay my money, I get my ticket, I go to a conference, I take these classes, I'm inspired for a new genre, I'm inspired to work with a new coach, and then we come back and, oops, we're by ourselves, right. So now, yeah, it's very similar to what now, you know, we're gonna be talking about is we've got to take the reins and we've got to do the work and it's, it's now up to us, and we're not necessarily having that coach or that director saying, okay, do this, do this, do this. Now we've got all of this energy and this motivation. How do we cement that and you know, and and start to just really move forward on that?   0:07:27 - Tom right. The trick is if you want to be the vo boss you need to learn how to be your own boss. Yeah, yeah, you know it's empowering to like be the boss. Yeah, I'm a tough boss. I'll tell you that my boss is a jerk my boss, I would say my boss is a bastard oh, I just said that oh. I had another word in mind, but I didn't use it.   0:07:49 - Anne I'm not sure if we'll bleep that out, but yeah woo, I'll tell you what. I've never worked for a harder boss, but isn't that true?   0:07:57 - Tom yeah, yeah, I'm hard on ourselves. I'm pretty real, I'm I'm often pretty relentless and I have to be because I have this bad habit.   0:08:05 - Anne It's called eating and and having a roof over my head, yes, and not living in a cardboard box, yes, yeah, you know.   0:08:14 - Tom So yeah, the motivation is like there's no net yeah, you know what I mean. If I don't audition for this, there's a 100 chance that I'm not gonna book it well, yeah, and I think that's what propels me for sure you know what I mean to get work done, I mean right the fact that I need right.   0:08:30 - Anne I need to be able to pay the mortgage right, and that's the, and that's a.   0:08:33 - Tom That's a great point, anne, is that different people need to find different motivations. To stay motivated when you are alone in your booth talking to yourself? You know, so that's a big part of you know I talk about effectiveness. There's a difference between talent and effectiveness. There's a lot of talented aspiring voice actors out there with interesting voices but like I have an interesting pen, it doesn't make me an author, you know.   0:09:02 - Anne I own a wrench. It doesn't make me a plumber, so having talent, voice doesn't make me effective. Yeah absolutely.   0:09:11 - Tom You know, because no one's going to get discovered, you're not going to get your big break. It doesn't really work that way.   0:09:16 - Anne It's what you do with that pen that matters. It's what you do with that voice that matters.   0:09:20 - Tom Exactly and consistently. Yes, absolutely so when you get home from that conference and you've got all that positive attitude. That's great If you can bottle it and put it on a shelf for later.   0:09:30 - Anne That's great.   0:09:31 - Tom But when you get home, it's about what can I do to be effective today, tomorrow, next week, month, quarter year, two years, five years? And I'm not necessarily talking about writing a business plan, which is something I do do as the, as the video strategist, but it's about how do I think about myself to stay motivated. How do I think about and understand the voiceover industry? So there's a reality, because that's the other thing and, as you know, people coming into the industry have no idea what the industry is. They just have this odd preconceived notion of what it is. Oh yeah, I talk interesting. I got to just get an agent and then they'll just throw Saxa cash at me.   0:10:10 - Anne Exactly and I think, yeah, you don't know what you don't know right.   0:10:13 - Tom You don't know what you don't know.   0:10:15 - Anne And especially not only that is it a new industry for a lot of people, but it's also the fact that there's a lot of people who are very unhappy in their current job situation and get out of that work for somebody else, but then working for yourself is a whole different animal and that really is, I think, where the double it's.   The double whammy comes in for those people new to the industry, because not only are they trying to acquire the skills to be a good talent, but now they also have to have good business skills as well, and they're not used to working for themselves or having to go out and market themselves and get work and all those hats that they've got to put on.   0:10:58 - Tom Yeah, I had a maybe 15 years ago here in New York City. I had a 10 minute meet up with an agent I don't remember which one but he said tell me about yourself. And I talked about all the things I do. He's like, wow, you got a lot of hats.   And I'm like, yeah he's like but you only have one head and I'm like, yeah, so you kind of to be an effective voice actor, you need to kind of be the Dr Seuss Bartholomew in 1001 hats and have all those hats stacked up on. Some of them, some of them, you can take on and put on and take off, but a bunch of them you have to have stacked on your head at the same time, because there is no job description for being a voice actor.   I mean, there is, but nobody knows what it is, until you get here and it's like unlocking these doors and you know, moving these hedges aside and going oh, I need to do, I have to do that. You know it's like. It's almost like a maze, which is the logo of the VO strategist. Now that I think about it helping you navigate the voice over the industry, absolutely. So, navigating the maze of what it means to be an effective voice actor, and staying motivated at the same time. Because, yes, invoicing.   0:12:08 - Anne Staying, staying motivated when you're doing something like accounting.   0:12:12 - Tom Like for me.   0:12:12 - Anne I mean, well, I'm not. I mean, there are some people who love accounting, right, so there's accounting for me. How do there you go See for me? I'm like, oh God, actually I will tell you, tom. So for me, staying motivated while I have an S corp, right, and an S corp is creating all of this paperwork for me and for me, I can't, god it's, and it's just like I need to, either just, you know, be educated about, you know, the entire S corp thing, or I outsource, right. So I think if I had to do all that paperwork and try to understand it all and to stay motivated, it would be very, very difficult for that to happen, and it may discourage me from wanting to have a voiceover business because of this paperwork that I continually have to supply to the government, to you know, support this business, but I, you know, for me one of my solutions is to outsource that right.   And make sure that I have somebody that I trust and can go to if I have any questions, that can handle that aspect for me. So if I'll, I know, constantly get mail, mail, snail mail saying you need to provide this information, or you owe us this amount of money, or you need to prepay this or you know whatever that is, and so I literally will just be like, oh my gosh, this is a lot of paperwork. So I will literally scan that in and send that to my accountant, which, by the way, I will say to the to to my dying day, I will say my accountant was my very best investment for this business. I just I can't. I can't do the numbers.   0:13:45 - Tom Right, well, and that's that's a very important point, and is that if you're getting into the voiceover industry, obviously you need to understand what does that entail on you know soft skills, hard skills, hardware, software, marketing, money and all that stuff, and you need to know, you need to have an understanding of what your S corp is, or what this is, where that is, and then you can decide okay, this is a skill I need to just understand, but I'll outsource it and this is a skill like, for example, using your DAW.   0:14:14 - Anne You have to know how to use your DAW.   0:14:17 - Tom You need to know how to audition and you need to know how to record and clean up and save and, you know, deliver audio file. Some stuff is non-negotiable. You know what I mean.   0:14:27 - Anne But managing your S corp, you know right, that's another thing.   0:14:31 - Tom Or if you're an audio book narrator or a long form e-learning narrator, do you want to hire an audio, an audio engineer, to clean up your clean up your audio or do you want to do that, Do it yourself? Or do you say do it yourself first to understand how it works and why it works and then outsource it? And I'm sure some of your bosses are thinking I don't have that money. To outsource yes, I don't have the money to outsource.   0:14:54 - Anne You need to invest your money to make the money. That's what I always start by saying invest the money to make the money, but and maybe not try to put yourself wholeheartedly into the business until you do have money that you can invest, because that would be, from any perspective, any business. You have to have some investment money.   0:15:15 - Tom I mean it's not just voiceover, just some.   0:15:17 - Anne for some reason it became this like oh, we just talking to a microphone, how easy is that. I don't need to have any money or be prepared, or maybe I just got to buy a mic.   And that, I think, is where, where in the problem lies, where then you start to have, you know, predators in the industry that will sell that dream and people who will get taken for that dream and without the realization that, yeah, they have to put things in place and make investments to do that. So let's, let's kind of go back to we've gone to a conference and we've gotten motivated, and even it doesn't have to be a physical conference, it could be a virtual, online, you know, workshop or whatnot. I just went to a workshop called Unstoppable you. It was a Tony Robbins thing, which was all about the motivation, all about the motivation.   But yeah, now that you've, now that you're motivated, you've got to do the work and you've got to maybe take a look at the hard like really take a look at the the hard questions and and then make concrete steps to move forward. So it's like I can ask the hard questions. I can maybe, I can maybe get through the answers and they might make me cry, some of them Right, they right and so I can do that, but now I have to actually do the hard part, which is moving forward. So what, what would be the first thing you would recommend? Let's say, somebody that comes back from a conference or, you know, a workshop or whatever, and maybe a meeting with a coach and they're they're inspired, they're motivated. What's the first thing that you would have them do?   0:16:46 - Tom The first thing that I would have them do is write down in severe detail what they're perfect.   0:16:51 - Anne Severe detail, not just detail. Severe detail, severe detail.   0:16:55 - Tom What their perfect voiceover day looks like.   0:16:58 - Anne Oh, okay, okay. Follow me with just work with me for a second.   0:17:02 - Tom What time of day are you waking up? What time zone are you in when you wake up? Are you waking up in a house, a cabin, a condo, a space station?   a bunker, a submarine Like? Where are you waking up when it's time to start doing voiceover? Does the limo pick you up? Are you walking downstairs into the basement? Are you getting on a bicycle to go downtown? Are you going into your backyard to your custom built booth? Are you going into the attic? Are you taking a bus or a train? And then, when you get there, what are? What kind of? What kind of bookings are you doing? What genres or subgenres of voiceover? One or more? How much are you getting paid? Obviously, we all want to get paid as much as possible, but what is that actual number that you need to cover all of your voiceover expenses, all of your personal expenses? Manage your debt, save for retirement, save for that college education for your kids, save for that car and have enough to have a little fun.   0:18:01 - Anne And this is before. You're a working talent, right, this is still a, really, if you're just new to the industry and you want to get into it and you're let's say, you're in the process with a coach and you're making demos.   You want to project what genres? First of all, if you're working with a coach, you should probably have a genre in mind already yes, right, and with a genre specific coach. So you kind of know where you want to go. But putting that down, right, even if you're not actually doing the work as you were mentioning okay, this is the work, I'm going to be doing these auditions, even if you don't have audition opportunities yet and you're still just working. Put down that on the list because you want to make sure that you have the space for it and the time for it. Right, right, right. And then the goal, steps, the steps.   0:18:42 - Tom Right, exactly. And once you have that perfect day realized, written down in severe detail, you walk that backwards to the day to the moment that you're writing that list. What are you missing between right now and that perfect voiceover day? What money, how much money do you need? What training do you need? What tools do you need? What marketing acumen do you need? All of the things big and small, knowledge, hardware, software, tangible, intangible mindset to get you where you are and figure out what are you missing and what you need to do to fill those gaps. So when you come home from a conference, all motivated, try to figure out what the practical application of all the wonderful information that you just collected is. We go to all these workshops and listen to all these panels and take all these notes and some of the knowledge is immediately actionable and others are, for you know, I took this genre workshop. I'm gonna keep these notes and maybe I'll be ready for it in a year or two.   And so on and so forth. Organize, organize everything, because you need to figure out how actionable and practical everything that you need is to do to get you to that perfect voiceover day and use the glow and energy and momentum of the conference that you just got home from to kind of build that foundation, build that scaffolding, create that structure. So, when you get back into the day to day grind of trying to build or develop or nurture your voiceover business, you have effective systems of thought and effective systems of execution.   0:20:23 - Anne And let me interject also what I think is important is, of course, yes, you took that workshop on animation or whatever promo, imaging, whatever it is, you know, medical narration, I say because I just did that, love it or corporate.   I think that you always have to keep your eye on the market. I gosh, I feel like sometimes we become so blinded by our own like performance because we're like, oh, I want to get really good at animation or I want to get really good at, you know, whatever commercial or corporate. But I think we always have to keep our eye on the marketplace because if there's not a demand or if the demand is not as big and I'm always telling this to my students about corporate, it's a huge market, is a huge opportunity there Versus animation. Not that there isn't a huge opportunity there, but there's less of an opportunity there than there is in corporate. There's more of an opportunity in e-learning than there is in even I would say, promo, promo, of course. Right, documentary. Everybody that comes to me for narration says I want to do documentaries and I'm like well, how many documentaries do you think there are at any given time? Do you know?   0:21:32 - Tom what I mean yeah.   0:21:33 - Anne Compared to the 30.4 million registered companies that have a product or service to sell that need a corporate narrator.   0:21:40 - Tom And need human resources videos and need orientation videos and need compliance videos Right.   0:21:45 - Anne And I think that that is something that we really need to take into consideration at all points in our business, because that will affect right when you're talking about here's where I am. Here are the here's my perfect day, here's where I want to be, I want to be animating, I want to be doing animations on television or whatever that is, or I want to have a national commercial spot. That's all well and good. However, I think that you also have to take in account what is the market for that? Is there okay? Are you going to be able? And I used to think erroneously back in the beginning, before I realized what the market was oh, I just need a commercial a day, right? Or you know, oh, wouldn't that be nice.   Oh yeah, tom, we're talking about real talk, right? Real bosses. Well, okay, I don't know anybody that gets a commercial a day, except for people who are maybe on rosters for serious exam or they're doing, and that's usually for lower pay. But if you're thinking like, oh, if I got a national spot, even one a week, right, I mean, unless you're in it, voice for a campaign. I mean, I love how you laugh, that's the perfect way.   0:22:46 - Tom Well, I laugh because I thought I had to sound like James Earl Jones.   0:22:47 - Anne Right, I mean yeah, and so like that is. You know you have to understand what's realistic for the, for the industry too, when you're jotting these down. So any education that you can get on that right. Listen to podcasts like Vio Boss. I mean, we've been doing this for six years, right, talking about markets and business. And, tom, you've been doing gosh. How many years have you been doing business consulting?   0:23:10 - Tom and strategizing Over 10 years.   0:23:12 - Anne Yeah, over 10 years and specifically in our industry, and so, like guys, I mean, look, I'm not saying of course you should come to us, but I mean we've been doing this for a long time, we've watched the market evolve and so that's why I want to point it out and say that this is so important for us to have in consideration in our, in our step by step process of here's where we are, here's where we want to be. Now, if I want to be, you know, a commercial, you know Vio artist, well, maybe I want to think about another genre as well, to add in, to supplement those days when I don't get the national campaign every day. And I'm not trying to crush your dreams, guys, that's just not, that's just not it. But you know we're. This is a dose of reality, right, tom?   This is our whole series is based on let's talk real yeah.   0:23:57 - Tom The reality is is that you may be. You may be good at something you don't like, and you may not be good at something you do like.   A lot of people are drawn to the industry because they love cartoons and video games, and a lot of them may not be good at it, but they may find out that they are good at corporate or e-learning, which is a far more to your point, stable form of voiceover income, because, when it comes to effectiveness, the bottom line of effectiveness as a voice actor is you're able to make money. You're able to develop a revenue stream.   0:24:28 - Anne Develop any revenue stream that you need to make. Yeah, develop any revenue stream.   0:24:32 - Tom you can in any genre, whether you like it or not, and I always say all genres of voiceover is storytelling. I get my storytelling jollies out of any voiceover genre.   0:24:44 - Anne I don't care Teaching statistics right or you're narrating corporate responsibility or HR policies. You are absolutely a character and you are acting, and so that is a requirement, that is, I mean, baseline requirement, especially now when we talked about this in our last podcast. It is such a requirement for us to be the actors that we are called to be, I mean, and that includes all genres. So, yes, and that's the reality, that's the real talk.   0:25:14 - Tom Yes.   0:25:15 - Anne The real talk is you've got to invest in yourself, in developing those skills and getting good coaching, and not just taking acting classes. I know everybody would say take an acting class, and I think that's wonderful too, but you've also got to take acting classes as they pertain to voiceover as well.   0:25:32 - Tom Yes, there's a crossover. I mean, I always say improv classes are extremely important because it gives you the ability to make strong decisions quickly while you're narrating your copy. But to an end, compliment stuff like that, and there's like there are people who do improv for voiceover and acting specifically for voiceover. It's a very specific skill.   0:25:54 - Anne There's very specific muscles that you need to flex, Absolutely, absolutely To be to do voiceover as opposed to on camera or as opposed to theater. I'm all about teaching the acting for narration and, by the way, tom, I miss you. I don't see you. Did you turn your camera off by any chance?   0:26:09 - Tom No, I'm still here.   0:26:11 - Anne Oh, I don't see you how interesting. That's that's. Do you see yourself?   0:26:16 - Tom I do.   0:26:17 - Anne Oh, okay. Well, I'm just going to assume.   0:26:19 - Tom Okay.   0:26:20 - Anne I'm going to assume that it just kind of blipped off. But you know, hey guys, technology Riverside, hopefully we'll have your, we'll have your video anyways.   0:26:30 - Tom Okay.   0:26:30 - Anne Absolutely, so, okay, so, so what a great conversation. So now you're back. Okay, so that's interesting. So now we've taken our, we've come back from the conference, we're motivated, we're, we've written down our, our perfect voiceover day, right and so, and then we've worked backwards to the steps. And so what would be next after that, tom, how do do we need to? We probably need to take time to evaluate whether we've accomplished those steps right, absolutely.   Once we've written them down and we've and we've developed our to-do list. Now we've got to go back, maybe in a week or so or in a you know at the end of the day and say did I accomplish my tasks?   0:27:07 - Tom Yes, self-evaluation and self-reflection is one of the most important skill sets to be an effective voice actor. Because you don't have. Unless you're part of my mentorship program or you're mentoring with Ann, you are working in a vacuum. You need to develop the ability to metacognate, which is the ability to stand outside of thank you, the ability to stand outside of yourself. Look at yourself objectively and say did I do what I assigned to my assigned for myself? Did I do it? Well, if I didn't do it, why didn't I do it? Was there a logistical problem? Was a financial problem? Was there a motivational problem? You know and find out why, why you do what you do, how you tick, and there's a time to be kind to yourself and there's a kind, there's a time to be tough on yourself. You know.   0:27:56 - Anne And so taking I think I've always tough on myself, but you're right, yeah.   0:27:59 - Tom You have to be able to. You have to be able to do both, because we're all human. We all have different energy levels and emotional states that fluctuate constantly throughout the day, week, month, year, decade, and we need to be accommodating for that. Oh, mercury's in retrograde today, so I'm not going to get my invoicing done, or what were you?   0:28:18 - Anne know oh, technology sucks, technology sucks. You know what I mean?   0:28:21 - Tom Oh, great retrograde, yeah, you know but if you find yourself making excuses for yourself about why you're not doing things, then you are not being effective.   0:28:28 - Anne Because I have an, I have an action for it. That's a whole another podcast right there.   0:28:32 - Tom Yeah, I have my action plan right here and I don't check off every single box. I get about 80% of my action plan stuff done every month, dating back to 2006. And sometimes it's-.   0:28:42 - Anne Do you have records from back then? Do you do you have a-.   0:28:45 - Tom I have a binder right here with every single one of these. So January 2006-. I love it Was my first printed one and I've done 12 a year since 2006 and it's in this binder right over here.   0:28:54 - Anne It does not surprise me that you love numbers too. I love numbers, right, yeah, see, and so that I feel goes along with.   Now I'm not so much, although I will. I will share my book is out there, but I have my to-do list that I love to cross things off on and I have my planner where I like to write my goals down. I'm not always as good as I propose to be, but, yeah, I think that's super important. But, wow, what a great conversation. I want to talk to you more, in more detail, about a lot of these steps because I think they're super important in our series. So, tom, thank you so so much for joining me for our first, our first in a series of real bosses.   0:29:35 - Tom Yeah.   0:29:36 - Anne So, guys, if you, I have a simple mission for you, but one that has big impact 100 voices, one hour, $10,000. Four times a year. Do you want to know what I'm talking about? Visit 100voiceswhocareorg to find out more and to join us. And big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. We love IPDTL. We love connecting with bosses like Tom and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses, have an amazing week and be real bosses. We'll see you next week. Bye, bye.   Transcribed by https://podium.page

In this episode, Anne is joined by special guest Tom Dheere, the Vo Strategist. With over 25 years of experience, Tom knows how to ride the waves of ever-changing technology and market shifts. Discover the secrets to driving traffic to your website through social media, blogging, and top-notch content to keep you ahead of the pack. They share how old-school tactics like cold calling and email marketing might not be cutting it anymore. Boost your confidence with Tom's killer advice on negotiating rates like a BOSS and flipping your approach to snag the rates you truly deserve. Plus, we unveil the controversial truth about Fiverr and how this billion-dollar beast can actually help you charge industry-standard rates… Transcript 0:00:01 - Anne Hey, hey everyone, Welcome to the VO Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I am excited to welcome voiceover business and marketing consultant and VO strategist, Tom Dheere, to the show. As a voice actor with over 25 years of experience, Tom brings a wealth of voiceover knowledge to the table In his one-on-one strategy sessions, diagnostic sessions those sound interesting and his mentorship program, As well as speaker appearances at industry conferences. Tom, I am so excited to have you here today. Thanks for joining me.    0:00:34 - Tom Thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure to chat with you, Anne.    0:00:37 - Anne Tom, you know it's chaotic out there.    I'll tell you what there's disruption, There's, I say, mass panic, and I think that today more than ever, as entrepreneurs and business owners, we need a strategy more than ever. So I am super duper glad that we are here talking to you about that. So let's get a feel for your take on the industry, because you've been in the industry for gosh over 25 years and I'm sure you've seen it evolve, kind of like myself. Talk a little bit about your experience in this industry and how it's evolved over the years.    0:01:20 - Tom Okay, well, i decided I wanted to be a voice actor in 1994, so I was a graduate school dropout, so I got my. I decided in late 94, got most of my. I got my training in my voiceover demo in 95, which is a cassette tape. I still have it here in the drawer. And then when I got that demo, my coach gave me a little certificate and gave me a stack of Xerox copies of production company listings and said you know, start your good, your cold calling good luck. Because in 1995, there was I mean there was an internet and some websites, but there was no.    0:01:57 - Anne Yeah, there was no social media.    0:01:59 - Tom There was no online casting sites, there was no home recording, there was no digital delivery of audio files, there was no phone patch, there was ISDN. But like, who had that besides? like the, the, the rate, you know the major TV networks, you know. So you had to buy cold called and I called, called for a year until I got my first gig, so until I joined voice 123 in 2006,. That was pretty much, that was pretty much the only way to do it, and also I was going into New York city once a week. Voiceover is unlimited and you'd pay whatever was $35 for a 10 minute meet.    Meet up with a casting director or an agent or a manager which is how I got my, my first manager, who I still have to this day, 17, 18 years later. So my cassette turned into a CD which I was duplicating, burning you know. Oh God, the my post office hated my guts.    0:03:04 - Anne Now mail. Yes, cause.    0:03:06 - Tom I had a long a lawn bag of padded mailers and they'd be like, oh geez, here comes Tom again and like, all right, everybody just gets to the side and just tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick you know cause?    0:03:15 - Anne I was just constantly sending it out, yeah, and then that evolved into MP threes. So let's, let's, let's start. I think that there's, there's something, there's a parallel here, a disruption right. Some disruption in the industry right. So it evolved from a tape into a CD, into today, which is all digital right.    0:03:36 - Tom Right And then and then pay a voice bank and voicescom and voice 123 disrupted the voiceover again, again and you know, and now AI is disrupting the voiceover industry. But this is what I say and all my students.    0:03:52 - Anne A pattern Tom. A pattern Tom. Yes, there is a pattern throughout the years, so I don't think that disruption is going to stop anytime soon.    0:04:00 - Tom No, it's going to keep going, and what I like to say is that when the light bulb was invented, it disrupted the candle making industry and nobody cared about the candle makers, except for the candle makers.    0:04:13 - Anne People were saying Oh good I can.    0:04:15 - Tom I can read a book at night without my house burning down. Like that's where everybody was coming from. It's like okay. So the candle makers had a choice They could go to Congress to try to get light bulbs outlawed, they could go la, la, la, la la which a lot of voice actors have been doing especially literally today, this week, on the voiceover groups. Or they could adjust to their candle making industry to accommodate certain parts of the light bulb industry, or they could convert their candle making factory into a light bulb making factory.    So, you can either fight it, ignore it, adapt to it or embrace it. And the voice actors that are going to still be standing for lack of a better term on the other side of AI and whatever the next disruption is, the ones that are adapting, evolving learning, growing, operating from a position of abundance as opposed to a position of scarcity, and not shouting at the rain. They're the ones that are still going to have a viable voiceover career. Yeah.    0:05:08 - Anne Yeah, i'll tell you, it has really it has really wreaked havoc, and I think that you know, gosh, you know, and I've been following it and following it And you know, two years ago on the VO Bus podcast, i mean, i think that you and I can both agree to do due diligence and educate yourself on, you know, evolving technologies or disruptive technologies that can affect your business, and that is so very important that we, you know, truly educate ourselves. And I had done a series of interviews, of which I'm still doing periodically, with you know, large companies, people that are working in synthetic voices, ai companies to kind of get to ask those tough questions like Hey, what's happening here? And are you, you know, is there transparency? You know, what are your ethics? You know, do you have, you know, objectives in terms of protecting?    you know, voices as you go, and I think it's been an educational journey for not just me as a business owner and a voice artist, but for the AI companies as well. I think we are all learning and evolving with technology as we go, and I've had experience doing that myself, you know, working in technology for over 20 years, and I still consider myself working in technology. So, in terms of you know your, your students and and your clients. What is your? what is your biggest tip now for, let's say, people coming into the industry, how to get a handle on this industry and be successful.    0:06:43 - Tom Do as much research as you possibly can. Work with professional coaches who are boots on the ground blue collar voice actors as well like who are actively engaged in the voiceover industry. That's not to say that there's not genre coaches out there, like Mary Lynn Wissner, for example, who is not a voice actor but is an amazing coach.    There are only a handful of people like that, as you know and but people who are actively, who have to continue to grow and evolve with the industry to maintain relevance in the industry And be better than the AIs on a storytelling level as quickly as you possibly can.    0:07:23 - Anne Yeah.    0:07:24 - Tom Because they are getting better and better almost daily. Are they going to completely take over the entire voiceover industry? No, Are they going to. you know, take away a percentage of certain jobs of certain genres, mostly for entry level voice actors Yes, yeah. The trick is how do you get good enough that, when you're starting your voiceover journey, that you're already better than the AIs, so you can kind of leap over?    that hurdle and be a human narrator as quickly as possible. That's going to be the challenge. What I think that means is the people that are more naturally talented, the people who have theater training, the people who have on-camera film and TV training, improv training, those people coming into the industry which are all parts of what defines a better actor are going to have a better chance than people just coming at it from other sectors. Frankly, i mean, a registered nurse has every right to stop being a nurse and try to do medical narration for a living, and I encourage that. I've trained people like that, you've trained people like that over the years, but it's going to get harder and harder if they don't have natural storytelling billing, natural storytelling ability, or they haven't been trained in non-voiceover storytelling. So get as many acting classes as you can under your belt. Get as many improv classes under your belt so you can learn how to make strong choices quickly, which is a key to being a good narrator. Understand the technology and maybe get your voice cloned as quickly as possible.    0:09:05 - Anne That's very interesting. I'm finding that I do have some people, because I did the series and I've been investigating and educating myself with AI companies for the past few years, i've had people ask me, and not all of them want to shout the rafters saying, oh, i'm out there trying to figure out how to get my voice cloned or how to get a synthetic voice. But what's interesting is that synthetic voice, the companies that are creating synthetic voices. They're also evolving and changing on a daily basis, and so it's really important that, as voice actors, you keep up with that, and I'm always a big proponent of if you have a business, you want to understand the market in which you're selling And so part of that market. If the market is changing. And, tom, as a business person, you're all about researching and looking at the market as it evolves over the years. And where do you see the market heading in terms of voiceover casting? Where are we going to be able to get these jobs, or where can voiceover talent find work? And I know that's the golden question, right.    People like they expect a five-minute answer from me. Where can I get voiceover work? But where do you see that evolving and heading as we move on in the future?    0:10:27 - Tom That's a great question, Anne. There will still always be a place for needing agents, managers and casting directors for high end work, class A national commercials, high end video games and cartoons, high end promo, high end in show narration. I don't think that's ever. I don't think that's ever going to change. Casting sites are going to continue to be as relevant as ever and is still the the most effective way for new voice actors to onboard into the industry. Because you can. All you need is a credit card and you could just join the casting site and start auditioning immediately.    The interesting part is going to be the direct marketing part which. I learned the hard way when all of my direct marketing strategies, which worked like gangbusters in 2013, 14, 15, 16, all of a sudden stopped working because, so many of those production companies recording studios that I had worked with through direct marketing strategies have moved to online casting sites just because it's easier for them to curate a roster, manage talent, manage projects.    So, um, ai is going to take a chunk out of online casting sites. It's going to take a chunk out of direct marketing clients the low end stuff and stuff that would never normally get like there's audio books out there that will never get produced unless it's an AI voice.    0:11:51 - Anne It's going to do it out of interest or ergonomics or just sure, whatever that sure whatever the rights holder can, um, can afford.    0:11:57 - Tom So you also new students, when it comes to this kind of strategies, need to figure out what. How does what a success look like for them, Which genres do they want to be successful in And which portals do they need to access to become successful in said genres? So if you want to be on the next Pixar film or be in the next fallout video game, you need to get a lot of training, you need to get a top notch demo, you need to get high end agents and you're going to eventually need to join SAG-AFTRA. That's not. That's not changing for everybody else. You know the pendulum is going to swing, stuff's going to move or stuff's going to move around, but you're still going to need you're still going to need the aforementioned good training, good demo good website, good home recording.    Um, and the ability to keep up with industry's trends by reading blogs, watching podcasts like this um, working with coaches like, like you and me. Um, it's going to what, what percentage of what genre is going to get lost and where you're going to need to go for each of it. I mean, who can? who can say, but if you have, if, if online casting sites stigmatize you, get over it get in there develop your skills develop your auditioning skills.    0:13:10 - Anne That was it. That was the nugget of the day. That was awesome Sound right of the day. Yeah.    0:13:14 - Tom Because online casting sites like I'm. I know because I'm on voice 123. I audition every day and I regularly see clients that are posting casting notices that I used to work with five, six, seven, eight, 10 years ago, who won't take my phone calls anymore because they're on casting sites. That's the only way they'll talk to me And I'm totally fine with that, because you said you got to go where the buyers are. you got to go where the market is going. That's where they are. That's where you need to be.    0:13:41 - Anne I think there's something to say If we just tell every boss out there, you know, first of all, um, be a boss, right And understand that you really have to stop. And I think, take a uh, uh, take a look at the bigger picture. The bigger picture is we're providing a product, uh, to a market, the market. You have to evolve with the market. It's not about you know, uh, oh, my gosh, it's, it's, it's you know your voice over business and your craft and your and your art, which I completely, yes, it is. But honestly, you know, at the end of the day, right, i want to pay my mortgage, right, and if I want to have a business, it always amazes me, tom, how you know you go to conferences and I know you know when, when, cause I used to, i used to teach business classes as well. Whenever you go to see which classes fill up first, it's always the performance classes, it's always the cartoon and video game.    Always those because, well, okay, so they're fine, they they allow the creativity. But, honestly, you know, beyond the fun and the creativity in the booth, you've got to be able to run a business that will make a profit. If you want to write, if you want to do this as a business and you want and you're serious about it I mean, if it's you know, if it's a hobby, that's a difference, that's a different podcast. Sure, you know, and I think that you know what you offer, you know, to people as a, a VO strategist or even just a business strategist, is invaluable. And I truly think, bosses out there, you've got to step back.    Um, and yes, of course you know, create the product that the market is demanding Right, and and also know how to run your business right. And so I love your story that you know the people that used to take your calls no longer will take your calls. You know your calls and now you have to work with them on the platform, and mostly because it's easy and more convenient And I will be the first person to ask any of you bosses out there if you're using any form of AI to do anything. Let's say, create a blog post or, you know, maybe play around and change your headshot And you're using the technology to make your jobs better, more efficient, then you cannot be the person that gets upset if you're not, let's say, evolving along with the synthetic voice aspect of it.    0:16:06 - Tom You know, absolutely.    0:16:08 - Anne I mean. So, as we talk to peer to peer, i think, or pay to play platforms, i think online casting is absolutely. What about Tom? let's talk about what about your website, your online platform, your online storefront? What do you think about that in terms of being able to market your business?    0:16:29 - Tom Okay, it's funny because people coming into the industry, you know most of them realize they need some kind of training and then they realize, oh, i need to record from home. You know I need a demo. And then almost all of them think, well, i need some kind of website. But they don't know why they need a website. They don't know how to build a website and they don't know what is necessary to create an effective website. What I tell my students is that no one is gonna find your website nobody.    There are literally tens of thousands of voice actor websites out there. The odds of them typing in some stuff on Google, bing, yahoo and finding you is virtually impossible. I mean, tomdeercom is over 20 years old and I've been blogging for 14 years, so I've got really good SEO and I rarely get found on it. Anyway, the point is, your job as a voice actor is to drive traffic to your website, and you do that by being on social media, blogging, creating a presence, creating conversations, creating quality content to get them to notice you. And then there's email marketing and cold calling, which I'm sure you realize that they don't work a fraction as well as they used to, because why should they answer the phone of some voice actor trying to talk about themselves, when they're just gonna go to an online casting site to cast their next project. They're already more than halfway down the sales funnel anyway on an online casting site, as opposed to trying to get them into the sales funnel through cold calling and all that.    So driving traffic to your website is extremely important, and then get them to do the most important thing, which is download your demos.    0:18:12 - Anne Everything else, is irrelevant Or click it back. I mean, everything else is secondary to downloading the demo. Right, yeah, but now downloading the demo? now we've got there's the fear. There's now there's some fear that if we allow our audio, you know, freely out there and I, you know I have podcast, you have podcast. Anybody can download this podcast I've been doing it for six years and potentially turn it into a voice.    0:18:40 - Tom Okay, Look everybody. I've been doing this for 25 years. I have done thousands and thousands of voiceover projects. I've probably done tens of thousands of auditions over the years, I guarantee my voice has been cloned without my knowledge many times over.    I guarantee that auditions that I have you, that I have done, has been used for broadcast without my consent or without compensation. Every website that exists is going to get hacked at some point. None of our data is safe, it's just not. All you can do is do the best you can to mitigate your risk. try to be secure. I can't worry about submitting my demo and worrying about it getting cloned.    I mean if I, if I was worried about that, i wouldn't have a career. I would. I'd be quadruple bolting the door and hiding in the bathtub. There's just nothing you can do about it. So don't worry about don't worry about that. Put the demo out there. I mean because the the the odds of it happening are extremely slim, but the longer you're here, the more likely it's going to happen. It's just you know well.    0:19:45 - Anne Tom, i mean, i think I think really again, we we talk about that bad actors, um, which is so interesting in our industry. Now, the term bad actor, right. Had I not really delved in deep to talking to people outside of my own industry, i would not have known what the bad actor meant. Um, outside of, like the literal meaning of it, right, but the bad actors meaning those companies, right, or those people that may take advantage, unfair advantage, um, with the in in clone voices, without permission, create deep fakes, all of those things. There's always that possibility And I had such an interesting conversation the other day with Shyamala Praga, who is very well known in the AI industry.    Um, regarding, you know, laws and regulations and and instead of being reactive which is what we typically are right, reactive, something bad happens and then a law or you know some sort of policy is is established that then, you know, takes care of it. Um, really trying to again educate all of us, not just in our industry but everywhere, that, um, these things could potentially happen and we need to protect ourselves from bad things. Um, you know, what are your thoughts about? I mean, i, like, i really love your, your, your perspective on you can't be worrying about that all the time, but are there any steps that you would recommend to to, let's say, to protect um or to be cautious about that? I mean, i certainly am not going to make my demo not downloadable because I want it to be convenient for people to listen and buy.    0:21:20 - Tom You have to have it. It has to be downloadable because, when it comes to your direct marketing strategies and driving traffic to your website, the odds of them having a voiceover project for you right now, at the time that you have marketed to them successfully and they've actually gone to your website to review your demos, the odds of them actually having a gig for you is infinitesimally small. I can count, i think, on two fingers in 25 years that that's actually happened. Representation and online casting insights are for opportunities now. Direct marketing, driving traffic to your website is for opportunities.    later They're not going to remember you once they leave that website of yours You need to have. They need to walk away with the demo, so they stick it in a folder somewhere in their cloud or on their desktop, so when an opportunity comes along that you may be right, for your demo was right there for them to review, or if again another thing that I always like- to say is that, no matter what in a marketplace and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, there are I will pay for things that make my life easier and make my life more convenient.    0:22:25 - Anne So, for example, i hate, i always use this my lipstick. So my lipstick is reliable, dependable, stays on all day, i don't have to put it on again And I you know I use that as an example product. I pay a lot of money for this lipstick. Now I certainly feel that no matter. Look AI, you know pay to play sites, you know driving down, you know rates. I no matter what. If somebody likes and gangooza right and likes her product, they're going to pay the money and they're going to remember me and they're going to buy it again and again. I'd love to hear your thoughts.    0:22:58 - Tom You go to a department store and there's five pairs of shoes on on the shelf and four of them cost, you know, $75 and one of them cost $800.    Everybody immediately goes and looks at oh, what's this? What's the value of this? Why is it worth $800? Well, if they says it's worth $800, then clearly it must be worth $800. So I will happily spend $800 on this pair of shoes. So most people coming into the voiceover industry are broke and perceive themselves as an employee or a starving artist. They are already immediately devaluing themselves and training voice seekers to devalue them.    So it's a systems of, it's a systems of thought problem. And I'm not going to sit here and blow sunshine up everybody's butt and say you're special, you're wonderful, you're, you're going to. All your dreams are going to come true, because that's not what the VOStratigist does. This VOStratigist does not sell dreams. The VOStratigist sells reality.    My job is to give you objective data so you can set, you can make informed decisions about your voiceover career. But you want to do everything you can to set yourself up for success And the first step one is mindset. Know your worth. Know your worth based on your pure talent, know your worth based on your training, know your worth based on your experience. And know your worth based on what the industry standards are.    Sag After over here GVAA over there, Know what your worth is and comport yourself And it's maybe it's a little fake it till you make it. I don't. I'm not sure you can do that. Having confidence and being confident in your training and your talent and your understanding of the rates, That should empower you to make sure that people aren't buying stuff from you that are shopping in the wrong aisle.    0:24:56 - Anne And also, i would say, as a as a talent just coming in, i don't think you can expect to get into or to become a top tier you know, professional without making an investment. I mean, that's the other thing too. I cannot tell you how many people they'll be like. You know, i really need coaching, but I just I don't have any. You know, they don't have the budget they don't have And, and so in reality, there has to be those things in place. You can't expect to go in and make a ton of money without investing in yourself and investing in that, in that coaching that's going to help you to be the most human voice actor that you can be.    0:25:37 - Tom Patience is one of the most important skills that you need to have as a new voice actor. Everyone wants to start talking for money as quickly as possible and using their funny cartoon voices that their dentist told them is hilarious And that's all. That's all great, but if you can't afford the training yet, build a budget create a savings plan.    be patient, find community theaters or summer theater programs that have free acting and improv training, and develop your foundation of storytelling skills while you're saving money to work with a professional coach like Anne, or work with a VO strategist you know a business marketing consultant like me. There's a ton of things that you can do. But if you dive in when you're not ready or you go with the first demo coach that you can afford and submit to that demo to those agents for the first time, it's not gonna go well.    It's not gonna go well. So I'll never tell anybody not to pursue their dreams, but I will tell everybody to be smart about pursuing their dreams by having. This is what I like to say no matter what you're doing in life, do it with both hands and on a flat surface. Be smart about it, i learned that when I tried to open an Amazon box with a pair of open scissors like this, which we've all done, Oh, yeah, yeah, not yeah. Both hands flat surface.    0:26:58 - Anne Very guilty of that. So then, let me talk a little. let's talk a little bit about rates, because what is your best advice for those actors who might be struggling to find work at their desired rates when you know there is this perceived? you know, race to the bottom, with technology disrupting What, how can they pivot their approach to succeed and get rates that they deserved?    0:27:21 - Tom Learn how to negotiate. And it's not like a Middle East Bazaar where you're haggling over the price of, you know, a goat or something.    It's just the better that you can understand the rate structure of voiceover on a session level and on a usage level, the better, the more empowered you are to educate your clients or potential clients, because for so many casting notices that I see, or so many emails hey, i found you on Google, whatever they've never cast a voiceover in their life.    They haven't the faintest idea what the ergonomics are, what project management is involved or what the rate structure is. Being experienced it's not necessarily a correlation between being professional and experienced. You don't have to be experienced to be professional To understand there is a rate structure. I understand what the rate structure is and I'm able to articulate it to somebody who has no idea how the voiceover industry works. The more that you can do that, the more empowered you are to get industry standard rates and the more empowered you are to educate voice seekers to value you and not let them use cheap rates. Well, i paid this guy five bucks. I'm gonna leverage it to get you to pay you five bucks where you say no, you don't do that You gotta think long term.    You have to value yourself and your fellow voice actors, because every time you accept a ratty rate, you're making it harder for everybody else. Every time you accept an industry standard rate, you're making it easier for everybody else.    0:28:51 - Anne Now, but okay. So then here's the question. Yes, i agree that there should be the thought process about the industry as a whole. However, you will always have those voice actors that it is their business, right? I'm a big proponent of saying mind your own business. That means, don't worry about how other people get their business. In that respect, though, do you know what I'm saying? I truly believe I want people to understand their worth in order to make a bold and take the challenge to actually negotiate that worth with a potential client. So, speaking of five bucks, i know that you had talked to me a little bit about an experiment that you had conducted using the online pay to play the F word, fiverr.    And I personally, i'm one of those people that thinks we need to talk about this because it is a viable marketplace in the well viable it exists in our industry. Let's put it that way you may not agree with it and you may not feel that it values your worth, but what were your findings? What do you think about Fiverr?    0:29:58 - Tom Okay, it had been coming up so much in conversations with my students, with my fellow voice actors, fellow coaches, producers, panelists at conferences And, like I said, my job as a video strategist is to collect objective data so I can help my students make thoughtful, informed decisions about how to move their voiceover business forward. Fiverr is real, it is here. It's a billion dollar company. There are thousands and thousands of voice actors on it. So I needed to understand what exactly it is, why it is and how it works. So I created an account, I followed the tutorials, i looked at YouTube videos, i built a profile and then you build what are called gigs And a gig is basically broken down by genre.    I will narrate I'm an American voice actor who will narrate your explainer video or e-learning module or whatever And then what you do is you build the rate, but you're breaking it down bit by bit. So This is what really fascinated me about it is if someone said to you and I've got an explainer video, how much do you charge? and you probably charge what? 400, 500, whatever sometime around there But if you actually broke down by dollar, how much it costs for you to record the video, how much it costs to edit the video, to clean up, process, format, save, deliver. Do retakes give you permission to use the video in a certain way on a certain platform? if you chop up that $400 into all those little individual things, that's basically what you're doing on Fiverr. So it could say base price $5, but then if you add deliver as a wave file, deliver it within 24 hours you know, we'll only get two retakes.    Mvp, I'll move you up to the front of the line, If you, then if you go da-da-da-da, then the total can be $400. It can be an industry standard rate. Fiverr saying oh, we get everything's for five bucks.    0:32:05 - Anne It's more of a marketing position than anything else. And if you think about that in reality, right, if they're going for that market for the people who don't right, who don't have a lot of money to spend and they want to go for lower priced, saying Fiverr and marketing themselves as Fiverr, get affordable, then absolutely I mean as a business they built for a market where there was a hole And yeah, and now of course, because they have so many voice artists on it right.    that increases their SEO value, which increases, you know, ease, convenience, of use, and so that's what makes them you know the force that they are in the industry.    0:32:49 - Tom Right. So there's three levels on Fiverr And if you earn a certain amount of money and a certain amount of timing, get a certain amount of ratings in a certain amount of time, then you go to the next level and then the top level and the people at the top level charge industry standard rates and they do fine. The trick is kind of punching through that membrane from the first level to the second, in the second to the third. I feel like that's where it can be challenging.    0:33:12 - Anne Yeah, and I feel like you'd have to work that, because I think you have to earn that right, you have to get so many ratings, and I feel like you'd have to actually work the platform for a bit so that you could get up the ratings, so that you could climb up the ladder, so that you could charge industry rates. But, although not impossible, it's a very interesting concept. And because we are talking about it, bosses, doesn't necessarily mean we are condoning that platform, i mean. But if you look at it from a business standpoint, it absolutely, you know it covered a hole in the market and logically I can see how that works.    I absolutely can see how that works Now, do I love that? it makes voiceover seem cheap? No, not at all. And I think to each and everyone out there, it is up to you to make that decision whether you want your brand associated with that brand, because that's a whole other way of doing business, right? So, again, you're almost working for the platform And then that platform represents your brand versus, let's say, for me, i've always been let's do it myself, and you know, seo for me.    I've been online for years and it's worked in my favor And I've built up a great clientele list And I'm very fortunate that I'm able to continue on that. And while I am a member of a lot of pay to place, i don't have time to actually audition. And you know, for me, email marketing well, it's probably not quite as effective. Well, it's hard to say. I still believe that there's effectiveness in email marketing if you've got the right message and you have the right subject line, because people have less and less of an attention span. But it's one of the reasons why I built the VO Boss Blast. It was a way to help direct market talent, so that they didn't, you know, and I basically started it for myself. Isn't that like every company.    0:35:05 - Tom Right, if you create a product you want, help You do it to serve your needs.    0:35:09 - Anne I did it because I was like I don't have time. I want to do the podcast, i want to do VOPs, i want to be you know, i'm coaching, so I don't have a ton of time, so let me just create a direct marketing product that I can use. And then, of course, i shared that.    0:35:24 - Tom I do want to say for the record I have not booked anything on Fiverr. I set up my gig, i made adjustments to my rates because you're supposed to refresh it and try to feed the algorithm. I couldn't. I also did the same exercise on Upwork and it worked similarly and I got the same results. I could not. I could not book anything. I guess that just means I'm not a particularly good voice actor.    0:35:47 - Anne No, I think it's because you didn't have 100% of your right time to really devote to it. I mean, that's what. I think That's a part of it.    0:35:55 - Tom And the other thing is understanding the economies of the voice seekers, absolutely.    0:35:59 - Anne Diversify the economies and understanding of you know, money and how it works, of the country of origin of the voice actor too, absolutely, and Tom, i'll be the first one to say I mean, we've been in this business a long time. If you were on Voice 123 in 2006, right, you remember? Freelancer.    0:36:17 - Tom Oh, i was on Freelancer. Oh good, so was I. And Elanzen and Guru, yeah, i was on all of them.    0:36:22 - Anne So all of those evolved into Fiverr.    Really, that's really it was that it was like who could bid the lowest right? And I will tell you that, as a you know, entering into the online space, i mean that's where I did get some jobs. Now, did I take jobs that were probably not what I was worth? Yeah, I did, i did, but I learned quickly, you know, and it was a tough, it was a tight, it was frustrating because it was always people under bidding And so you get that type of client, but what you do is you learn about where those clients right, those are the clients that don't value your product Not necessarily you but they don't value the product enough to pay the price right.    0:37:01 - Tom They want to pay the cheapest, the biggest of the pain they are.    0:37:04 - Anne Exactly, exactly So. Wow, what a great conversation, tom. This has been so wonderful and enlightening for the bosses out there. I'm quite sure, tom, how can people get in touch with you and work with you?    0:37:17 - Tom Oh, go to vostrategistcom. I encourage you to book a free 15 minute consult. We can talk about any part of the voiceover industry that you want. I also have a video shop where I've got closing in on 30 different videos covering everything in the voiceover industry, from time management to workflow to genre exploration to managing your finances. I also have a great mentorship program where you can do 30 minute check-ins with me once a week, once a month or twice a month. It also gives you access to some of those videos for free. But, yeah, book a session with me, free session with me at vostrategistcom, and I'd love to chat with you.    0:37:50 - Anne Good stuff, tom. Yeah, bosses, today more than ever we need a strategy for moving forward in our business. So go to it, tom. Thank you again. I would like to talk to you bosses about. As individuals, you know, it can seem difficult to make a huge impact, but as a group, we can contribute to the growth of our communities in ways that we never thought possible. Visit 100voiceswhocareorg to learn how And a big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl You too can connect in network like bosses like Tom and myself. Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.    Transcribed by https://podium.page

Did you know we have rainforest right here in the UK? Visit magical Bovey Valley Woods in Devon with us as we walk alongside a babbling brook and over a Tolkien-esque stone bridge among trees dripping with lichens and mosses and learn all about it. Site manager David Rickwood describes the features of UK rainforest, some of the fantastic species that live here and why this habitat is so important as he takes us on a lichen hunt, shows us an otter holt and much more. Find out what a rapid rainforest assessment involves with Tom, and meet Eleanor who is working hard to create a powerful alliance to protect rainforest in the South West. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees, for people, for wildlife.  Adam: When most people think about rainforests, they're imagining the tropical, densely overgrown jungles of, well, mainly of our imagination, because so few of us have actually been there. But what they don't think about is the rainforests of places as close to home as a Devonshire cream tea. And that's what's so shocking because Devon and some other parts of the UK have in fact some of the most important temperate rainforests the world knows. And it's shocking not only because it's a bit of a surprise that we have these rainforests, but we've not really been taking much care of them. The ecologist Dominic DellaSala said that today's European rainforests are mere fragments, a reminder of a bygone era when rainforests flourished and they're now barely hanging on as contemporary rainforest relics. Well, I'm off to see, well, I hate to describe it as one of those relics, but one of those jewels that remains with us in Devon to see what a British rainforest looks like, why it's important, and what's fun about it.   Well, I've come to Bovey Valley Woods, which, unsurprisingly, I suppose, lies in the valley of the River Bovey on the South East side of Dartmoor National Park, and rather close to Newton Abbot. You might have heard of that. There are lots of trees and there are lots of wildlife here, brimming with spring migrant birds, so we might come across the Dartford warbler, the brightly coloured kingfisher or the pied flycatcher, which arrives from Africa each spring to breed. We might come across some rather tiny hazel dormice, which I understand are here as well. I'm not here at night, but apparently if you are, there are lots of bats which hunt on the wing. And of course there's the Dartmoor ponies, which graze in the wildflower meadows around here, but we are planning on heading into the wood itself.  David: My name is David Rickwood and I work for the Woodland Trust and I'm a site manager here at Bovey Valley Woods.   Adam: Well, just describe to me sort of what we're looking out at now. We can, I can hear a stream somewhere nearby. So there's clearly that down in the valley, but describe what, what's going on around us.  David: Yeah. So we're on the eastern edge of Dartmoor. There are 9 river systems that rise on, on Dartmoor. They carve these kind of deep valley systems off the edge of the moor. So a lot of people, when they imagine Dartmoor, they're thinking about the big open expanses of the moorland, but actually all of these river valley systems are where the concentrations of ancient woodland and temperate rainforests sit. You know, they have this kind of ambient temperature all year round, so we don't have these extremes of heat and cold. And they provide those kind of perfect conditions really.  Adam: Yeah. I mean, when one thinks of Dartmoor, it is those, those bare sort of rather dramatic landscapes. But you were saying hidden in the creases around those are these, these rich temperate rainforest environments.  David: Absolutely. You see so although people think of the open moorland of Dartmoor and the high moor, actually, a lot of that biodiversity and a lot of the diversity is around the edges in these wooded valleys. So woodland bird assemblages is particularly important in this part of the world, so species like pied flycatcher, wood warbler, invertebrates like blue ground beetle, and, of course, all of these lichens, mosses and liverworts that are, you know, in these sort of niches in these temperate rainforests.  Adam: Right, so we've jumped into this discussion about rainforests. And we're in a temperate rainforest, but I'm still not sure what a temperate rainforest is, because it conjures up this image, sort of, of jungle, doesn't it, of hacking back dense forestry, of the Amazon, of sort of Victorian explorers, that's not the environment we're in, which leads, I think, me to a confusion, I think lots of people are confused about what it is we're talking about. How would you define a a rainforest?  David: OK, so in visual terms, a lot of the trees around here have what they call epiphytic plants. There's things growing on the trees, there's things growing on the rocks. There's things growing on other plants and you get this lush abundance of particularly mosses.  Adam: Yeah. So sorry, the epiphytic, it means it's living on it, but it's not actually taking its energy from that. It's quite a beneficial relationship?  David: Yeah. So if you were to go and look at a tree branch in, say, central London, you're not going to see it carpeted in mosses and lichen. So here the air quality is very high and so you get this abundance of of plants growing on other plants. And because it's so wet, moist and damp throughout the year, those plants can survive actually quite high in the canopy.  Adam: So the sorts of things that you're seeing in a rainforest are lichens. The trees aren't particularly different from trees you'd see elsewhere are they? The oaks and all of that. So it is, lichens are a big identifier and the amount of rain presumably?   David: Absolutely yeah. So we're we're talking about sort of 200 days a year where rainfall is occurring in some form that might actually be cloud, just wet mist, not necessarily pouring down with rain. And we're also talking about rainfall in excess of say 12 to 1400 millimetres a year.  Adam: And we're very lucky that we're in a rainforest and it's not raining. Well, it's lucky for me. So now this is a tell me about this piece of woodland itself.  David: And we're right on the edge of the moorland. And so the woodland here is gradually creeping out onto the edge of the moor, and it's spread out from these kind of core areas in the valley. Now, that's brilliant in terms of renaturalising the landscape. But actually it can be quite problematic for some of the species in temperate rainforests, so in particular on this site here we've got lots of very old veteran trees and ancient trees that grew in a landscape that was a bit more open, had a lot more light. And it's those trees that often have some of these really key species assemblages on base rich bark or what they call dry bark communities. So it's all quite niche in terms of the conversation. But those trees are really the stars in this valley and so whilst we're kind of managing the woodland here, we need to give, you know, conscious effort to kind of manage around some of those key areas.  Adam: So look, let's go off into the woodland, but just to tell tell me a bit about what we're gonna see the plan for the day.  David: OK. So the plan for the day is we're going to just walk down this track here and we're going to drop down to a place called Hisley Bridge and that crosses the River Bovey. And that in itself is a very enchanting and beautiful place, and I think probably some of this mystery around temperate rainforest will start to fall into place when you see that.  Adam: Well I tell you what, let's go, let's go off before we, before we go off on that adventure just, just pause for a moment to listen to that babbling brook. So we're talking about this rainforest in recovery or trying to build a rainforest here almost. How delicate is this environment?  David: It's interesting, I think probably in the past five or ten years, I think we've become increasingly aware, particularly through working with partners like Plantlife, actually how vulnerable these sites are and, and how the changing climate is going to be a real threat to sites like this. And whilst we're doing our best in terms of managing the site and trying to restore it and trying to create the right kind of conditions, there are some aspects about climate that we cannot manage. And so resilience is really this much sought after objective and I think on a site like this, it provides an interesting template because over the past 100 years this site has kind of spread out into the wider landscape. That expansion has created an element of resilience for us.  Adam: I'm not sure I fully understand, you're saying there is some resilience because of the expansion of it, but well, how does that create resilience?  David: So things like lichens, so so this, this site in particular is really important for lichens and Hisley Wood on the other side of the river is probably one of a handful of sites in England. As this woodland has expanded, it's allowed some of those species to actually move into the wider landscape. So instead of there maybe being 3 or 4 oak trees with a particular species here, there might be 100 oak trees with those species.  Adam: So the fact you've got more of them makes the whole thing more resilient, if something happens to one, it's not a disaster. Understood. So given, my feet are very wet, I I need new boots. Just just tell you if I'm grimacing, it's nothing to do with you. Oh, I was going to talk to you, but look at this. That is a bridge straight out of The Hobbit! Just, this is extraordinary! Tell me about that.  David: So this here is a historic bridge that would have provided the access to Boveycombe farmstead. So Boveycombe farmstead probably is mediaeval in origin, but the the structure that there's now is abandoned.  Adam: This is I mean just describe it, it's it's made of rocks and it looks so haphazardly done. It's straight out of, you do it in a film, isn't it? It's very high up, very slumped down. It is absolutely beautiful. I'm going to insist I take a photo of you on it. And and it's a lovely flowing river right underneath it as well.   David: Yeah so this is the River Bovey and about 200, 300 hundred metres upstream there's a confluence of the River Bovey and the Becka Brook. And these are sort of torrent rivers so they go up and down really quickly with the rainfall. So this area here and the bridge, in fact, at times becomes an island because the river comes up so high.  Adam: What where we are now, underwater?  David: Yeah so if you look at all of these stones, they're all water washed and you can see the sand from the riverbed that's been washed out here.  Adam: Oh, I can. Yeah, I can over there. It's amazing.  David: So coming here, you know, particularly in the autumn last year, November, December or the late autumn when we had a lot of rain yeah this was kind of underwater at this point. But these rivers are really important, or really important for things like salmon, spawning salmon, sea trout, yeah. So these, it's these kind of rivers that really would have had an abundance of salmon and sea trout in the past.  Adam: Do you still get some?  David: Yeah, we still get some now. And interestingly, even though it was super dry last July, the salmon numbers were the best they've been for probably 5 or 10 years.  Adam: I have many things to ask you, but we are gonna have to take a pause here as I take a photo. OK. Yeah. So the salmon, what other sort of wildlife have we got here?  David: So I don't if you can just look across the river there, but there's an oak tree and underneath the oak tree, the root plate has been hollowed out by the river.  Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see that. Yeah, it almost looks like there's, it's nothing supporting that tree.  David: Well, interestingly it does flex up and down, but that actually is an otter holt. So the otters move through this area on a regular basis and we've got a great little bit of footage actually of a mother with two kits in there and they're in there for a brief while. But these rivers are really good and things like otters are a really good sign that the fish population's good. So there'll be dippers on the river here, kingfishers, grey wagtails...  Adam: I, I got distracted by the beautiful bridge, but it's all, what I wanted to ask you about, this is such a sort of, environment on the edge that you're trying to protect, but at the same time it's Woodland Trust policy to encourage engagement, people to visit. In this particular area and this particular circumstance, is that a very difficult decision because actually you're going, hold on a second, you do want people to engage. On the other hand, this is an environment which really needs to be left alone for a while. Do you feel that tension at all?  David: Yeah, that's, that is an ongoing issue and so, for example here, one of the things we try to discourage, and we do that by just felling trees or putting in what you might describe as natural barriers, is we try and discourage some access to the river in certain areas. For example, like dogs, so dogs and the otter holt etc is not a great mix. And then you've got species like dipper that are nesting in these tiny little, really, balls of fern and grass along the edges here. And it's very, very easy for both a person, let alone a dog, to just flip those chicks out of that nest.  Adam: A black Labrador just dipping into the river there. I mean there, there's this sense of, you know, sort of called honey pot, sort of attractions and that was an issue I think, particularly in Dartmoor, over lockdown, wasn't it, where it's, sort of places became overwhelmed and I suppose again there's a tension, isn't there on the one hand, they can get overwhelmed. On the other hand, if you manage that well it drags people to the big, famous place and leaves the quieter places on their own. So it's a 2 sided coin. Do you think that's a, a good argument or not? You're smiling at me, almost going, no, no, it's, talking rubbish, no.  David: No, on the contrary, I think we have got to learn to manage it. And I think there's a number of aspects to that. I think we can try and draw people away from areas that we consider to be more sensitive. I think we need to engage people and try and broaden everybody's understanding of what's important about these places because the more people that appreciate them, love them and understand some of the nuance, and it is nuance, the more likely you are to be able to protect these places in the future and you know, for them to be sustained.  Adam: We've got a lot of travelling to do and not much time, so let's cross the bridge and you're taking me to some, some lichen. Oh, God, I'm just tripping over there, OK, right. We're we're we're going lichen hunting.   David: We are going to go lichen hunting. Although this isn't actually the best example, but there you go. Can you see these? There are these little teeth.   Adam: Little teeth underneath the lichen, and so that's why that's called dog lichen.   David: Yeah, and that's, it's part of a group of lichens that that behave in that way and they use those to actually attach itself to the moss or the rock.  Adam: That's not the nicest lichen I've seen, it looks very crumbly to me.   David: It looks a bit dry  Adam: It does look a bit dry, is that how it's meant to look?  David: Well you know, obviously we've had a very long dry spell.  Adam: Now I've just picked up a stick and this is covered in the lichen I love, but what is that? Do you know what, do you know what that's called? Now you see, I'm sorry I've embarrassed you.  David: No, no.   Adam: No don't worry about it, you don't have to know every bit of lichen.  David: No, it's palma... something or other, parmelia that's it.  Adam: It's parmelia, parmelia you see the noises are from his lichen advisors. Parmelia, I think it's so pretty. It's nicer than jewellery or something, you know, I think that's very nice. So OK. So we're heading down the other bank of the river and where are you taking me Dave?  David: Well, we're going to head down to a meadow that was cleared of conifer about 20 years ago, and so that's where part of this site has been restored. But on the way, we're going to have a look at a big ash tree and an oak tree that overhangs the river and that has a particular type of lichen called the lungwort growing on it.  Adam: Horrible name the lungwort. And was that, tell me if this is true, that, was it the Victorians who gave them these names, oh no actually it would have been before that, wouldn't it? Because it looked like an organ and they thought it, therefore, it was medicinal. Oh, well, it looks like a lung, therefore, if you've got a lung disease, you should eat that.  David: Yeah so that's exactly what, what it was. So this one looks like the inside of the lung, so it looks almost like the alveoli of the inside and people thought it was some kind of medicinal kind of treatment for any kind of ailment.  Adam: We should tell people don't eat this stuff.  David: No, don't eat it and certainly don't cut it or pick it, because it really is quite a rare species.  Adam: And that's this?  David: Yeah so there's, there's, there's several little pieces on this tree here.  Adam: I must be careful because I'm right by the river holding my phone, my recorder and if you hear a big splash, that'll be me going into the river, right? Yeah. Also I don't want to tread on all the lichens. Yeah, go on.  David: It's this one here. Which is looking a bit dry and crusty at the moment. So this is the, this is the lungwort. But if you look carefully this is an ash tree and this ash tree actually is dying.   Adam: I was going to say is this ash dieback?  David: Yeah so this is one of the trees that really will probably succumb to ash dieback in due course, but this one, thankfully, is leaning into this really big oak tree next door and the lungwort has managed actually to migrate across onto the oak. Can you see there's some small fragments here? And further up there's more fragments. So this is where potentially the loss of 1 species may be quite significant for the for the lichens that are growing on it.  Adam: And do you get involved? Do you give it a bit of a helping hand and sort of pick one up and put it over on the oak? Does, is that a thing that happens?  David: So we haven't done here, but that kind of translocation approach is being practised in some areas, particularly where the sites are almost pure ash. So this site here, we've got a range of species that lungwort can probably actually grow on. So we probably don't need to go down that route yet, but on some sites it's really critical. So they are translocating it.  Adam: I love that, I go ‘pick it up and put it down' and you very neatly go ‘that's called translocation', but you did it politely, so you didn't make me sound an idiot, and I tell you what I can't, I can't, I want a photo of the lungwort, but I'm, I can't come over that close. I'm going to fall in, so I'll give you my phone, and you can take a picture. That way I won't be climbing all over the place. Well, joining us with our band of merry men and women is actually someone who's responsible for a lot of work behind the scenes and actually bringing people together to make projects like this, this rejuvenation of this temperate rainforest possible.  Eleanor: So I'm Eleanor Lewis and I am the South West partnership lead for the Woodland Trust.  Adam: I know one of the big problems with these projects is that the Woodland Trust can't, perhaps doesn't even want to do them by themselves, so actually bringing in local communities, other organisations is super important.  Eleanor: Yeah, absolutely. I think the enormity of the kind of crises we face in terms of kind of climate change and biodiversity and nature just mean that no single organisation can do it on their own. And we can be so much more powerful and have far greater impact if we join together and create kind of partnerships and work at a landscape scale. So that's a fundamental part of my role really is identifying those kind of opportunities and working with other organisations to basically amplify all of our kind of organisational objectives. So at the moment we're seeking to kind of establish an alliance for the South West rainforest, so that's everyone from kind of Devon Wildlife Trust, Somerset Wildlife Trust, the National Trust and then you've got kind of Plantlife, RSPB, there's too many kind of to name, but a really kind of good mix of environmental kind of charities, but also those kind of policy makers. So we've been having conversations with Natural England and the Forestry Commission.  Adam: So what are you trying to get out of that association?  Eleanor: I think there's a number of different things, so there is already an existing alliance in Scotland, the Alliance for Scotland's Rainforest and I think one of the key things that has demonstrated is actually the power of having a kind of a coherent communications plan and therefore having a kind of 1 voice that is coming from all of these organisations  saying this is important, this is under threat and this is what we need to do is a really kind of key aim of the alliance.  Adam: Well Eleanor, thank you very much indeed. I do, I mean, I really do understand that sort of better together spirit really does help to achieve amazing things, so best of luck with that. I'm going to go off,  Dave is down there and I can see he's he's joined by a colleague I think there, so I'm going to go back and join them. But for the moment, thanks, thanks very much indeed.  Tom: So my name's Tom, Tom Pinches and we're contractors and consultants who work in the countryside.  Adam: And you're brought in to sort of identify trees that, it's called what this rapid, it sounds very flashy, so it's like you're the SAS of tree men, rapid reaction force. What is it called?  Tom: It's called the rapid rainforest assessment   Adam: Right and what is the rapid rainforest assessment?  Tom: The assessment formerly known as the rapid woodland assessment, it went through a little bit of a rebranding exercise.  Adam: Right, so what is it?  Tom: So the keyword there is rapid, so it's basically a toolkit which was developed by Plantlife to to easily identify temperate rainforests. I mean, my role as as a consultant really was to work with the volunteers.  Adam: Right. So showing them how to use this toolkit.  Tom: Yeah. So in theory it can be used by people with with less experience of ecological surveys. But there is some nuance there which requires a little bit of, a little bit of knowledge.  Adam: And so what sort of things are you testing? What, what are the the characteristics you're trying to find to identify this, this temperate rainforest?  Tom: So it it can be quite difficult to identify habitats and and that's something which ecologists have been struggling with for a while because there's no single identifying feature. So historically it was done by identifying indicator species. In certain habitats you tend to get communities of of species which which you find in that habitat. The problem with temperate rainforest is that those indicator species are plants like bryophytes, lichens, liverworts, mosses, which are very specialist, not not that many people can identify them, but the other things you can do are identify characteristics of the habitat. So these communities of species tend to be found in certain certain types of places. So one of the things we were looking at was was the structure of the woodland. We were looking at the age structure. We were looking at the amount of canopy cover, so those things are really important in temperate rainforest.  Adam: OK, so that's really critical, so this isn't Amazon rainforest transplanted to Devon tea land. This is, it does look different from a a jungle type Amazon.  Tom: So absolutely so the similarity is that they both require high rainfall, which is why you find them on the on the western edge of the UK where there's a lot of rainfall.  Adam: OK. And I don't wanna get obsessed by this, but why is it important that we identify this as rainforest, it looks just a very nice forest to me. The fact whether we call it temperate rainforest or just a bit of forest, doesn't seem to me to be that important. Why is it?  Tom: I mean, so temperate rainforest is is an incredibly rare habitat. So you could ask, why should we be conserving any incredibly rare habitats, I think, as a as a society, as an as a, as a, as a population, we all agree that that rare plants and rare habitats should be conserved, and so it's really important to identify them in order that we can conserve them. You know, we talk about diversity, we talk about diversity of species, biological diversity, diversity of habitats. And each of those sub habitats have their own biological diversity, biological uniqueness, and it's really important that we that we can identify as much nuance within those habitats and within that biological complexity as we can. So we can kind of save as much as we can, that's sort of under threat.  Adam: And it's beautiful as well as isnt it.  Tom: It is, yeah, it's really beautiful. They're some of the, I think some of the most beautiful habitats in the country, certainly in the country, maybe even the world. Very Tolkienesque, you know.  Adam: It is, as we crossed that bridge, I said if you're making a film of The Hobbit, that's what you put in The Hobbit.  Tom: Absolutely. And and and and you know these are habitats that inspired people like Tolkien to write about woodlands.  Adam: There is something mystical about them, isn't it? They do feel sort of magical places, little weird stuff could happen like stories.  Tom: They feel they feel timeless and ancient, and that's because they are ancient right and that's why they're so important because they're so old and they're so ancient. You know these really valuable habitats they're there because they've had so long such a long amount of time undisturbed to develop the diversity that they have.  Adam: Well, that is a fantastic point to end on Tom. And we are right in the middle of the woods right now and I have a train to catch, so I've got to make my way out to this place. So Tom, thank you very much, of course, my thanks to Eleanor and Dave and even the birds, the trees, the muds and the rivers which have given us our wonderful soundtrack for today. Thank you for listening. If you want to find a wood near you be it a temperate rainforest or something a little less exotic even, you can find a wood near you by going to woodlandtrust.org.uk forward stroke find a wood that's woodlandtrust.org.uk forward stroke find a wood. Until next time, happy wandering.  Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks with Adam Shaw. Join us next month, when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners and volunteers. Don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes or wherever you're listening to us and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walk special or send us an e-mail with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk. We look forward to hearing from you.   

Join us for an episode of virtual time travel to visit Hatfield Forest, Essex and explore over 2,000 years of rich history. As we journey through this outdoor museum, we chat to Tom Reed, a Woodland Trust ancient tree expert, and Ian Pease, a National Trust ranger, who explain why the wildlife and cultural value of these trees makes them irreplaceable. Discover why ancient trees are so important, what makes a tree ancient, how people have lived and worked with them through the centuries and the urgent need to better protect them. Don't forget to rate us and subscribe! Learn more about the Woodland Trust at woodlandtrust.org.uk Transcript You are listening to Woodland Walks, a podcast for the Woodland Trust, presented by Adam Shaw. We protect and plant trees for people to enjoy, to fight climate change and to help wildlife thrive. Adam: Well, today I am off to Hatfield Forest, which is the best-preserved medieval hunting forest in Europe, which has a very rich history stretching back, well, a very long time, some 2,000 years or so. Now, the forest itself is actually managed by the National Trust, but the Woodland Trust works very closely with them. In particular, the reason I'm going there is to look at and talk about ancient trees, their importance to people and landscape, and of course, how old you have to be to be ancient. Ian: My name is Ian Pease, and I'm one of the rangers here for the National Trust at Hatfield Forest. Adam: And so how long has your association been with this forest then? Ian: Well, it's getting on for 30 years. Adam: You're looking good on it. Ian: Thank you. Thank you. [Laughter] Adam: That's very cool. Now look I have met you by this extraordinary, well, is it a tree or is it two trees? Inaudible just describe where we are standing. Ian: So, we are standing just to the left of the entrance road as you come into the forest and this is a magnificent hornbeam, er and although, like you say Adam, it looks like it's two trees it is actually one. Adam: How do you, how do you know? Ian: Well, it's done what's called compartmentalise. So, what happens when trees get to this age –and this tree is without a doubt probably around 700 years old – is the heartwood falls away and you're left… Adam: The heartwood's in the middle? Ian: The heartwood, the heartwood in the centre falls away, and what you're left with is the living part of the tree, which is the sapwood and what you can see there is that what trees do, trees are very good at adapting when they get older. And they are generally very good at adapting throughout their lives. So, what has happened here is this tree has stabilised itself by compartmentalising, so sealed off these two halves to stabilise itself and you can also see what we call aerial roots starting to come down from the canopy which gives the tree the rigidity and strength. Adam: So, where is that? I can't see, let's have a look, what do you mean? Ian: Yeah, so let's have a closer look. Adam: I've never heard of aerial roots. Ian: You can see these structures… Adam: Yes, I see. Ian: …these structures are what we call aerial roots. Adam: Yeah, they do look like… but they're not in the ground, they're in the air. So where are they...? What function are they serving? Ian: Well, they're basically supporting the tree and what's happened here, this is an old pollard, so originally, they'd have been what we call bowling in the top there, and the roots would have gone down into that sort of composted material that was captured in the bowling, and as that's gradually fallen away that's what you're left with at the top there. Adam: So, these roots are supporting the tree as opposed to bringing it nutrients or anything? Ian: Well, they are supplying nutrients for it from this compost material… Adam: Oh, I see, which is still there. Ian: You can still see some of it there. What's happened obviously is as the trees aged, it's fallen through. Um and you can see the compartmentalisation on the edges there. A sort of almost callous effect. Adam: Well, amazing, well look I gotta get a photo of you by this which I will put on my Twitter account. Do you have a Twitter account? Ian: I haven't, but I've got Instagram and Facebook. Adam: I'm sure we'll put it on all of those things so you can see what Ian is talking about. Fantastic, well look, this is just the beginning. And you said it was the ancient way, the ancient tree way? The road? Ian: Er no this isn't the ancient way. This is, this is the vehicle accessway into the forest. But having said that Adam, there is stagecoaches who used to travel from the east heading to Bishop… sorry, heading down to London, would cut through Hatfield Forest to cut out Bishop Stortford. Adam: [laughter] Okay right. An ancient cut-through. There we are. Ian: That's it. Adam: There we are. Not quite up-to-date traffic news, [laughter] but if you're a time traveller, that's a bit of traffic news for you. Look, my first visit here, we've come on an amazing day, I'm very, very lucky. What would you suggest I look out for here? Ian: Well certainly if you go for a walk through… what I, what I sort of advise people to do is to go for a walk around the lake area to start with because that way as you go down to the lake area you go through the medieval landscape. And what's nice about the lake area is you've got the 1740s landscape, so that's the Capability Brown heart to the forest. He was employed here in the 1740s before the National Trust had the forest. It was owned by the Houblon family, and he developed, formed the lake down there and built a shell house next to the lake. So, you could almost go on a bit of a time travel, you know virtual time travel, by walking through this wood pasture where we are now amongst these stunning ancient trees. Take yourself into the 1740s and walk around the lake and then and then go from there. Adam: Brilliant. I'm heading off to the 1740s, what a fantastic bit of map reading that will be. Thank you very much, Ian. Really, really nice to see you. Ian: You're welcome, you're welcome. [Walking noise] Adam: Well, I'm just walking out actually, into a bit of open field here. Ooh look wild mushrooms… must avoid that. Don't want to trample on those. And beneath one of these trees is Tom from the Woodland Trust, and he is going to be my guide to the rest of this amazing forest. [Walking noise] Adam: So, Tom, I assume? Hi! What an amazing place, amazing place isn't it? Tom: An amazing place Adam, hi, nice to meet you. Adam: First of all, this is an unusual forest in terms of the Woodland Trust because it's actually the National Trust, but you sort of… this is a joint project or, explain the relationship? Why this is different? Tom: So, the National Trust and the Woodland Trust are both really passionate about seeing the protection of ancient and veteran trees, are interested in studying them and knowing where they are. So, when… we're here today because the National Trust and the Woodland Trust have been working together, well, for quite a few years actually, we've been working together to map ancient and veteran trees to our Ancient Tree Inventory. And also, in the past year and a half, we've also been working with the National Trust on a project called the Green Recovery Project, which was a Challenge Fund that we, both organisations, were working on. This was actually one of the sites, in fact, I was here just six months ago where I got to see first-hand some of the restoration work that was being done to some of these trees, some of the historic pollarded hornbeams for example. We got to see how they are now being managed and cared for here by the Trusts. Adam: And it is an amazing place. I mean we're lucky to be here on a great day. Oh! You can hear… we're near Stansted, so you might hear an airplane in the background there. Oh, but we've come out of this lovely, sort of, bit of woodland into this amazing open area here and it's, it does feel a very mixed sort of landscape doesn't it? Tom: Absolutely, I think if, if you're walking here with your dog or just on a fun day out, you might just think to yourself ‘ah this is a field or some nice trees here'. But actually, when you stop and look around you can see these living links to the past, and what we, walking through here is a medieval landscape where you've got a mixture of ancient trees, we can see some decaying oaks in the background over there. We've actually just walked past some large hornbeam pollards. So, these are trees that were working trees, hundreds of years ago that were managed as part of this landscape to provide timber for those who manage them, worked and lived in the area. So, to be able to walk past trees like that and, you know, to touch them – these living monuments – is just a real privilege. Well, we've got a mix here, we've got a mix of young trees, mature trees, ancient trees, and this area that we're stood on now is called, referred to as wood pasture because it was historically a wood landscape, where you had both a mix of livestock agriculture and also tree management as well. Adam: Well look, it's amazing just to our left there's two lovely trees, and I… I don't know what they are… but they're so lovely two people have stopped to take photos of them and I mean just a measure of how beautiful some of these, this landscape is. What… just a quick test… do you happen to know what that tree is? Tom: Yeah. So, we've got two, sort of, mature hawthorns there, so erm elsewhere in the forest there are actually some much older hawthorns… we have some ancient hawthorns here that would be several hundred years old. These are probably mature, probably over 100–150 years old… Adam: And they got lovely sort of red, red splattering over them. It just looks like someone's painted that, it's quite, quite an amazing sight. So, you talk about ancient trees. So what? What classifies a tree as ancient then? Because if [laugh] these were young and they're like 100 or something. So, what's ancient exactly? Tom: So, it's a great question. So ancient trees are those that are in their third and final life stage essentially. So, the sort of, the age at which we call different species ancient is different because different species have different life expectancies, and they have different growth rates. So, for example, if we look at yew trees, we make all those ancient from around about 400 to 500 years plus. If we look at hawthorn, for example, we would say they're probably ancient from around about 200 years of age. So, it does vary depending on which species you are referring to, but essentially the ancient phases, the third and final life stage… and very few trees actually live old enough to become ancient. It's only sites like this where the trees have been retained where, you know, these trees not been disturbed, they've not been felled, there's been no development here. So, these trees have survived in the landscape and been allowed to survive and that's why we can enjoy them today. So yeah, that's what an ancient tree is. Adam: And I mean, obviously there's almost a sentimental reason you, you don't want to destroy something which is 700 years old. But from an environmental perspective, do ancient trees offer the environment, do they offer animals something more than a younger tree does? Tom: Absolutely. I mean, I like to think of ancient trees as being like a living oasis for wildlife essentially. So, these are areas where you've got a huge variety of habitats both, you know, within like the tree structure, in the roots, in the canopy, even within like the heartwood and the hollows. So, ancient trees offer huge benefits for wildlife. Adam: But sorry, you're saying that's more… a 700-year-old tree would offer more environmental benefits than a 100-year-old tree. Is that what you're saying? Tom: Yeah, if you are comparing trees of the same species. Adam: So why is that? What is happening in that period that offers that benefit then? Tom: So, the reason really is owed to the decaying wood habitat. So as a tree ages, you get natural decay that's often caused by special heart rot fungi that can decay the tree. So, as it's standing it's decaying slowly over time, and by – that decaying wood – it kind of creates a load of microhabitats, so you get huge benefits for invertebrates. In fact, the site we're on today is one of the top ten sites in the UK for rare invertebrates because of the decaying wood habitats that are here. If you imagine a decaying tree with hollows and cavities and water pockets… imagine if you're an invertebrate, you know, you're such a small organism and you've got this huge ancient tree with all this variety of habitats. I mean you've essentially got… your whole world is in this tree, it's a whole universe of habitats. So, that's why they're important. Adam: So, it's quite poetic, isn't it? In its decay… the very fact it's decaying offers new life. Tom: Absolutely, exactly. So, they become, you know, just… they just transform into these oases for wildlife and it's owing to the decaying habitats that they have. Adam: And what's the oldest trees that you've got around here then? Tom: Yeah. Well, so some of these trees may well be in excess of 700 to 800 years of age. Adam: And are they yew? Because yew trees tend to last the longest don't they? Tom: Yeah. So, a lot of the oldest trees on this site will be pollards. So pollarding is where you cut the branches of a tree above head height. This was a historic, sort of, tree management practice – essentially the people who used to live and work here wanted to farm their livestock, and in order to make sure that they didn't, sort of, graze on the trees that they also used to harvest timber from, they were able to cut the tree above head height, typically above two metres in height. And what that does is quite two things. For the people managing these trees, it means that they can easily harvest the timber because in absence of power tools… imagine they were using hand tools and as the tree gets cut back it regrows into sort of finer, smaller stems that can be more easily harvested. Adam: And that's the sign of pollarding, isn't it? If you're a tree detective and you see these, sort of, small stems all coming up it's a sign it's been a pollarded tree. Tom: Absolutely, typically it will have, like, a fluted form cut around about two metres at head height and you'll see like a typical pollard knuckle, which is where you see all of these stems converging on the same point. But pollarding does actually bring some benefits to the tree as well and that's why some of the oldest trees here will be pollards because it has the effect of almost stabilising the tree. It means that the tree doesn't get too top-heavy and then collapses and dies. Instead, it keeps the trees more typically smaller and if they're regularly cut that keeps the tree in that stable form. So even the sort of the trees here which are, you know, extremely hollow, they look like, you know, how are they even still standing, because, like, what's supporting them? Because they're being managed as pollards. And then, you know, there are some sites where pollarding has stopped, you know, for example at Burnham Beeches is a site where you can see a lot of the pollards have not been pollarded for a long time and they've started to become top-heavy now, so and that presents a risk that you get greater wind loading and then they fall. So going back to what we were talking about the Green Recovery project that we are working on with the National Trust. And like I said, I was here six months ago, and we got to see some of the tree management here and we got to see some pollarding essentially. So, they were sort of cutting back the… some branches in the canopy to basically continue the pollarding management to try and replicate what was being done hundreds of years ago to make sure that these trees can survive for many years to come. Adam: Amazing that. Ian. Ian promised me some time travel. He pointed me towards the Capability Brown landscape. Do you know which way that is? Tom: Yeah, that would be straight back down the track. Adam: I was going to say, it's going the other way. Okay, but do you think we should head this way first? Tom: Yeah. Well, I mean, we can. We can go. Adam: I'm going with you. I'm going with you and will… I'm definitely going to see the Capability Brown later, but you lead me on. Tom: We can certainly make our way back there. Adam: So, tell me about where we're heading. Tom: So now we're just, we're walking through a sort of former medieval landscape. So, we've got a variety of trees here, we've got some oaks, we've got hawthorns, we've got field maples, we've got hornbeams. And if we're walking here, we can just see the sheer variety of trees in the landscape. So, when I'm walking through this landscape and I can't help but think about, you know, the people who were working here and living here and the way that this, the site, was managed. We can hear overhead planes are leaving Stansted Airport and I can only imagine what those people would have thought about that [laugh]. And it just, it just makes you think about the changes that this landscape has seen. And erm obviously the reason that we have ancient trees here is because this part of the landscape has remained unchanged. So, whilst there's been a lot of change around this site, this area has survived and that's ultimately enabled these trees to survive as well. Adam: Now you look after a lot of woodland. What separates this from lots of the other things that you've got an association with? Tom: So, I suppose what's really interesting about this site is that it's a former forest and then when we think about forests, people typically think about trees and they probably picture woodland, but actually… Adam: That's fair enough, isn't it? Tom: It's fair enough, but forest actually has a very different meaning in terms of the medieval sense. So, a forest was essentially an area of land that was subject to special hunting laws and these new areas were preserved really for the royals and, well, the royals and their sort of associates to hunt deer and enjoy riding through the landscape and they liked this kind of open landscape where the trees were kind of scattered. So, when you think of forests, like people typically think of dense woodland, but actually, it's more like this. It's big trees in a sort of sparse landscape where deer are allowed to run around, and the royals could be… were there on horseback sort of chasing them and hunting them. It was sort of a sport for them. And in a lot of sense, the commoners, if you like, were kept away from sites like this. An erm, but then the kind of, the legacy has been preserved. Adam: And it's interesting, isn't it, that because we think of these as natural places, they are natural places, that's what's important about them. But they're not unmanaged. It's not like the hand of man has not had a role in shaping this has very much been a man-made, a man-shaped environment. Is that fair? Tom: That's absolutely fair, yes. If I was… what's interesting when we look at ancient tree distribution more generally, there is a clear link between humans and where ancient trees are. So, for example, you might find ancient yew trees often in a churchyard setting, coz often…, well, ancient yews were respected by sort of earlier civilizations, the early Christians, even before that, the Druids respected ancient yews, which is why they've kind of been retained and associated with places of religious worship, you know, so there's always those kind of links between where humans have been and where ancient trees are now. And it just shows that really throughout history we've respected our trees, you know, other civilizations and cultures have respected these trees and you know, now we need to respect them too and continue their legacy. Adam: And I suppose one of the things that's striking for me is that although we are near Stansted, although it hasn't taken me long to drive from London, as far as you can see, you can't see anything. It's sort of trees for as far as you can see. It's a remarkable oasis in a rather heavily developed part of the UK. Tom: Absolutely. You know, to be able to come to this site only like an hour away from London is quite remarkable really, that places like this have survived. It's like a living outdoor museum almost. You know, you can go up to some of these trees, put your hand on them and these were the same trees that were being worked on over 500 years ago. You know… how many elements of nature can you say that about? You know, it's a remarkable privilege to be able to go and visit trees like that. That were managed hundreds of years ago. Adam: OK, now there is a suitable bench almost shaped fallen branch, so maybe we can head over there for a sit down and a chat. Tom: Sounds good. Hey, got some good sort of… at the top of the tree there, you've got something called retrenchment which is basically where the tree is dying back essentially. Adam: Right. Tom: So, over time like the canopy sort of reorganises itself. And then the tree kind of grows downward eventually. So, trees don't grow infinitely up and up and up, they tend to get… they die down and they get broader over time. Adam: So that's the sign of a change in its lifestyle… life stage sorry? Tom: Absolutely. Adam: So, we can see some sort of dead branches at the top that means it's coming into another stage, it's probably going to thicken out a bit. Tom: Exactly. Yeah. So, what I mean… what's happening essentially as the tree reaches a sort of theoretical maximum size… eventually, the tree can't transport that water from the roots. That kind of hydraulic action becomes limited. It can't pump water to the very top of the tree and so it, kind of, stops investing in those branches. It's grown to a good height, it doesn't need to compete with other trees around it, so it starts to reorganise itself. And those branches at the top start to die back and instead the tree invests in some of those like low… what were lower branches and they become more dominant, and the tree becomes broader in profile. The trunk becomes much wider as well. So, it's a typical sign of an ancient tree that they will typically have a large girth for their species. Like the trunk will have a large circumference for its species. That's like a key sign. Adam: Alright, look, this isn't… I can't quite sit on this one, but this is a very very pleasant place to stop. So, one of the big projects from the Woodland Trust is this Ancient Tree Inventory and I think you're sort of… you're in charge of that. So, what is that? Why is it important? Tom: So, the Ancient Tree Inventory is a citizen science project. So it's something that anyone can take part in and essentially what it seeks to do is to map ancient, veteran and notable trees across the UK to an online interactive map that everyone can, sort of, see, use, and enjoy. It started as a project called the Ancient Tree Hunt and essentially it was just to get ancient trees on the radar really, to get people inspired by them, to get people out there recording them. And in that project alone they mapped over 100,000 trees. But since then, it continued under the name of the Ancient Tree Inventory, and we're continuing to map trees on a daily basis. So, we have a network of volunteers around the UK who are more expert volunteers who are called verifiers, and what they are doing is going out and checking trees that members of the public have added. So, if people have been on a walk and have seen a big tree or a tree that looks like it's old – might be ancient, might be veteran – they add it to the map, that gets recorded as an unverified tree and then one of our volunteer verifiers comes along, they'll visit the tree and they'll assess whether they think it's an ancient tree or a veteran or a notable. They'll also maybe take some extra measurements of the tree, they'll check that it's been recorded in the right place and that the species has been identified correctly, things like that. Essentially what we're trying to do with the Ancient Tree Inventory, as well as raising awareness about ancient and veteran trees, is also, erm, our role in terms of research and understanding their current distribution. But also, from their protection point of view, the Ancient Tree Inventory is actually a really useful resource for the likes of people doing environmental impact assessments. So, we get a lot of requests for data from ecological consultants, from arboriculture consultants, even the local authorities that want to know where are the most significant ancient and veteran trees in their county or on a particular site, so that that can then be used to help inform, you know, planning decisions and, you know, we'd like to think that that is going to grow more that when, for example, there's a development or, you know, some sort of proposed change to an area that people will consult the Ancient Tree Inventory and they'll consider, sort of, changing plans if ancient or veteran trees are going to be harmed. We really just want to make sure that there is no loss… further loss of ancient and veteran trees essentially. Adam: And what sort of protection do ancient trees have? Do they have… like a listed building you get listed protection so you can't mess around with it. You can't knock it down, can't alter it. Does a 700-year-old tree get the same protection as a 700-year-old piece of brick? Tom: Well, I'm afraid to say the answer to that is no. So, none of the ancient trees, don't have any legal protection in the UK. As you say, some of our most treasured monuments and buildings benefit from scheduled monument status, but for ancient trees which may be of, at least the same age if not older, they don't have any protection. In fact, I remember on a recent visit to a churchyard where we went to see a really remarkable ancient yew tree, I think someone jokingly said at the time that the wood in the beams of that church are probably more protected than the wood in the trunk of that ancient yew tree. And that, kind of, really opened my mind to that whole debate on making that comparison between built heritage monuments and ancient trees. And we really want to see ancient trees be more considered as features of our cultural heritage, archaeological heritage, you know, they really are these living monuments and we need to look after them. Adam: Do you get a sense that public opinion is swinging in that direction to support ancient trees? Tom: Yeah, I think it is. I mean, you know, based on my role of working on the Ancient Tree Inventory, I've the fortune of speaking to members of the public about their ancient trees. And we do get lots of concern expressed to the Woodland Trust about, you know, what's happening to ancient and veteran trees in their area. But there is actually something that we're doing at the moment at the Trust which is our Living Legends campaign that launched earlier this year. So, we're actually making an attempt to gain stronger protection for ancient and veteran trees. We have a petition that's live at the moment and the campaign has a lot of different activities happening at the moment, but one of the headline things anyone can do is sign our petition where we're calling for stronger legal protection, for that to be reflected in policy so that there is basically legal protection to stop any harm to the trees. Adam: Okay. So, if someone's interested in being a volunteer and, sort of, adding to that inventory, how do they go about it? Tom: Yeah, so anyone can take part in the Ancient Tree Inventory. All they need to do is go to the Ancient Tree Inventory website where they'll be able to register, and they'll be able to create a free account. Essentially that means that when you sign into your account, you can just record the trees. The main things that you'll need to record are things like, you know, where the tree is so you take like a grid reference. Erm, if you can record the girth of the tree – so, this is the circumference of the tree – of the trunk itself… Adam: So, you need a long tape measure? Tom: Yeah, we typically suggest having a tape measure around about 10 metres where you can often get like a surveyor's tape from your local hardware store for example. And you can measure the trunk, normally about one and a half metres from ground level for consistency. You're really looking for the narrowest girth of this trunk. So, if the tree has like a big, sort of, burr, or if there's like a low hanging branch, then just record underneath it to try and get the narrowest measurement. So that… and that's essentially the most technical elements. If you can just record as well the species of the tree, whether it's on public or private land, do make sure to record some photos as well. The key things that we're really interested in looking at with a tree when we're assessing whether it's ancient or veteran is our veteran features or decay features. So, these are the kind of decaying wood habitats, for example, if the tree is hollowing, if the tree has decaying branches… so the tree behind me here has some deadwood in the top of the crown – this is what we call retrenchment. And any other kind of deadwood cavities, water pockets, holes, that sort of thing is all great to capture, both in the record itself, but also in the images too. Obviously, the more that people can tell us about trees, the more we know. And then it makes it a much more valuable resource. So, we always encourage people to submit as much information as they can. Adam: And if I mean like me, I'm very bad at spotting tree types. If you don't, if you see an old tree and you think I wanna record that, but I don't know what sort of tree it is, is that a problem or can you just go look, here's a photo, you'll probably know better than I do? Tom: Yeah. So, it is possible to record the species as unsure. It might be that you know that it's an oak, but you're not sure if it's pedunculate or sessile, so you can just record it as oak. We have a network of volunteer verifiers who are sort of ancient tree experts who will check… Adam: Check your homework for you. Tom: Yeah, exactly. Adam: And if you can't spot the tree type, there is actually a Woodland Trust app, isn't there? Tom: Yeah, that's right Adam, we have a… the Woodland Trust has a species identification app that you can use as well. The good thing is that for our ancient trees, most of the time they are actually native. So, the common native species are typically going to be, you know, oaks, beech, ash, hornbeam, yew trees. So, you know, these are species that most people are quite familiar with cause they tend to be native. Adam: We should do a podcast on that, sort of, how to spot the top five native UK trees. An idea for another podcast… you may be dragged back into this. Fantastic. Tom: Sounds good. [Pause] Adam: So, we've been walking through a beautiful sort of woodland glade, a very covered area. And what is typical of this particular site is that you do come out into so many different landscapes and so we've come out into this very open area, all of a sudden with this extraordinarily large lake. I think there's something suspiciously like a tearoom next door which might attract my attention in a moment… and a couple of seats finally to sit down. So, Tom, now… It's a beautiful place. I mean we're, we're... The weeds rustling in the wind, framing the lake in front of us… There's some ducks and some rowing boats and this is a wonderful place. But I… the feature here is ancient woodland, so is there a way of sort of measuring the value of a particular tree? Do you… is it very just sort of thumb in the air, sort of thing, in the wind… or is there a more scientific approach you can take? Tom: Yeah, I think there are lots of ways in which different people value their ancient trees and so one acronym we tend to use to capture, sort of, the main themes of why we value our ancient trees, can be thought of as ABC. So that stands for aesthetic value, biological value and cultural value. There is also historical value, which I'll talk about in a moment, but think about, sort of, aesthetic value and why our ancient trees are important, you know, can you imagine, sort of, walking through the landscape that we're walking today without the ancient trees? They do provide, like the character of this site, you know, walking and seeing these big hollowing living monuments – they're almost like sculptures. And, you know, not just on these sorts of sites, but if you think of what would our churchyards look like without our ancient yews? Or what would our hedgerows look like without those old hawthorn trees? Or what would our, sort of, the Highlands of Scotland look like without those, kind of remarkable lone standing-proud alders, and rowans and hollies that are like really typical of that landscape? So, because ancient trees form, like, a really important part of the overall character of our landscape that's one way in which we value them. The other way, of course, is biologically, so they provide immense habitat variety for wildlife and a single tree can support thousands of species and that's owing to the decaying wood habitats that they have. So as a tree ages it naturally hollows, starts to break down, you get hollowing in the branches, in the trunk, you get hollowing around the base of the tree – what we call buttressing. All of these create pockets and habitats and even microhabitats for wildlife, so it can be used by a range of organisms from birds to reptiles, to mammals like squirrels, badgers. For example, with birds, as well, owls will use them, they will actually use the cavities found in the canopies of ancient trees, they make their nests. Same for woodpeckers, which will use decaying wood to make their nests and bore for invertebrates. And of course, the invertebrates themselves – the opportunities provided to invertebrates by ancient trees is remarkable. There's a special term to describe invertebrates that depend on decaying wood, and that word is saproxylic. So, saproxylic invertebrates are those which depend on this decaying wood for a part of their life cycle. And then there is also the cultural value that we place on our ancient trees. Adam: So, that's the C. Tom: That's the C in our ABC. Adam: So, tell me about the cultural values. Now actually… that must be a hard thing to measure? Tom: Absolutely so, it's not always clear, in fact, that some trees you may walk past and not know that that tree has been, or you know what it's seen in its life and how other people in the past have interacted with it. For example, ancient trees in the churchyards, so it is often that you find ancient yew trees linked with former sites of religious worship because the… our early ancestors, the druids, and the sort of, early Christians had a… they saw, essentially, ancient yew trees as a deity, they worshipped them, they respected them. And as a result, those ancient yews persisted in that landscape. Adam: The cultural aspect, there's a cultural aspect, but there is also, it doesn't run from the alphabet [inaudible] ABC H, there's an H isn't there? A historical reference here, because these trees have been around for 700 years, 1000 years – kings and queens will have wandered under these trees, important decisions would have been made. Historic really, really historic decisions would be made. And under the boughs of these trees. Tom: Absolutely. And so, there are some trees around UK which we refer to as heritage trees that have… that we know have bared witness to some important historical moments. Or that well-known historical figures that visited those trees. For example, we have the Queen Elizabeth Oak or we have the Tolpuddle Martyrs' Tree which is thought to bear witness to the start of the trade union movement in the 1800s, and we have the Ankerwycke Yew that bared witness to the signing of the Magna Carta by King John, under that very tree. And it's still there today, a tree that is over 2,000 years old has, you know, such important historical values – irreplaceable in fact. That is probably the one word that we would like people to associate with trees – is the word irreplaceable. Because if that tree was to be lost, you would lose all of that historical reference. Adam: Fantastic. You know this site well, I mean you've come a long way to see me today, so I'm super pleased and very grateful for the guide. But I know you love this place, don't you? Tom: Absolutely. I need no excuse to come here. I think it just feels like walking back in history essentially. And there's just an amazing variety of trees. Yeah, I could just spend the whole week here. Adam: I think my family might miss me in a week, but who knows? They might not… they might not notice. But they're certainly not going to notice for the rest of day, so I'm going to take the rest of the day here. Thank you very much. Well, my thanks to Ian from the National Trust and Tom from the Woodland Trust but most of all, I suppose, thanks to you for listening. Now do remember if you want to find a wood near you, well, the Woodland Trust has a website to help. Just go to woodlandtrust.org.uk/findawood. Now you can find a wood near you. Well, until next time, happy wandering. Thank you for listening to the Woodland Trust Woodland Walks. Join us next month when Adam will be taking another walk in the company of Woodland Trust staff, partners, and volunteers and don't forget to subscribe to the series on iTunes, or wherever you're listening to us, and do give us a review and a rating. And why not send us a recording of your favourite woodland walk to be included in a future podcast? Keep it to a maximum of five minutes and please tell us what makes your woodland walks special. Or send an email with details of your favourite walk and what makes it special to you. Send any audio files to podcast@woodlandtrust.org.uk and we look forward to hearing from you.

„Myslím, že celé auto z 3D tiskárny mít nebudeme, ale některé jeho součásti rozhodně. Ale kéž bych se mýlil. Umím si ale představit, že přijedu do autoservisu, a než abych čekal na nějaký menší díl, tak si ho tam vytisknou,“ říká Tomáš Soóky, spoluzakladatel firmy 3D Wiser, který byl hostem podcastu Peak.cz.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Es passiert wirklich: Es wird Fest & Flauschig in den Kaulitz Hills! Die Podcast-Götter Olli und Jan sind zu Gast bei den Glamour-Twins. Und wie bei dieser Konstellation nicht anders zu erwarten, geht es äußerst turbulent zur Sache. So dauert es nur drei Sekunden von „Kann man Kunst vom Künstler trennen?” bis „Bill hatte in der Sauna mit Quincy Jones den Mund zu weit auf!” Und auch sonst gibt es ein wahres Themen-Gewitter - von super lustig bis sehr privat. Wir haben da schon mal paar Schlagzeilen vorbereitet: „Die geheimen Podcast-Tricks von Olli & Jan!“, „Tom: So ist es, nur der Sidekick von Heidi zu sein!“, „Enthüllt: So wohnt Jan Böhmermann”, „Oscars: Die Party von der keiner wissen darf!“, „Olli plant Angriff auf Jan” oder wie wäre es mit „Beim Thema FC Bayern eskaliert es!“? In diesem Sinne: Viel Spaß mit der Podcast-Folge aller Podcast-Folgen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Investing $50,000 in real estate can go a long way toward creating a diversified rental property portfolio that generates strong cash flow, provided that you do it right. Today we are asking each other the question how we would invest this amount of cash. In this episode, Tom, Emil and Michael share how they would invest $50,000 in real estate if they were just starting out, and if they know what they know now. --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Emil: Hey, everyone, welcome back for another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. My name is Emil Shour and today I'm joined by…   Tom: Tom Schneider   Michael: and Michael Albaum.   Emil: And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about how each of us would invest $50,000 in real estate, and we're gonna frame it as what we would do with that 50k when we were first starting out, versus how we would approach it now, so let's hop into this episode.   Well, I can't ask what's on your guys's mind? Because we just went through that so, huh… Hmm. You know, I used to have this boss that every every meeting every week, he would come in and just ask some random question to avoid the like, so how's everyone doing? That was like, it's a good way to kind of start a meeting, get like really random answers from people.   Tom: You got an example of one?   Emil: He would honestly as a really weird, he's like a weird dude. But like funny, weird. Yeah, probably not suitable for this show. The ones I remember.   Michael: There was a my, my wife loves David Sedaris. And he does a masterclass and he talks about comedy. And one of the questions he loves asking people was, so when was the last time you touched a monkey? He asked him on this and they were like, oh my gosh, like, can you smell it on me, I was working with him earlier at the zoo today? And he was like, no way and it led to him like being able to go play with the monkeys at the zoo. Like and that's why you should always ask random questions.   Emil: He had asked like 400 people, and they all I never spoke to him again, but that one person…   Michael: The one was a big one.   Emil: Then he finally got to meet a monkey at the zoo.   Michael: Yeah…   Tom: Bad news man, getting a baby monkey and then growing up a lot of sad stories about …like ripping arms off. Anyways, sorry…   Michael: That's a… go hard left fast…   Tom: Yeah.   Emil: All right with that we're gonna hop in and talk about real estate. So the topic today is how do you invest 50k? I think this will be interesting. If Michael ever gets it together here.   Michael: Oh man…   Emil: How would you invest 50k If you know what you know, now, but you're just starting out. So take yourself back to you have your current mind, you're going back to when you first started. So how would you invest 50k? And then we'll talk about you're at where you're at currently, you're 50 grand, you want to invest in real estate? What do you guys? What are we all doing? So who wants to kick off? Going back to the past with 50k?   Tom: So, Tom's gonna go first. I would… So me with real estate investing, I really enjoy real estate investing, but I also really enjoy the kind of passive nature of it, more probably more than Michael and Emil, I think they're like, way more active. So I think this is going to be a good diverse range of responses to this question. So what I would probably do so I'd say there's there's two options, right For me, as I also really like single family off of multifamily, just a little bit less to do plus less turns plus XYZ. What I, I would see this as two options, I can either go to, to pick buy two properties in more kind of class C markets, not not as in like, negative, but like smaller markets, right? Talking about like, maybe Birmingham or buy or like Memphis?     Emil: We'll call it Tier 3, it's classy…   Tom: Sure, sure. Sure. Sure. So the my options would be to that or to buy one property in like a Class B area, you know, maybe a, you know, Atlanta, Raleigh, you know, Dallas, one of those guys and where I am right now, if I had 50k, I'm still trying to deploy as much capital out there. I would get debt for sure. I would, I would max out my debt on it. You know, I … we know well, being conscious of not getting over my tips, making sure that my income could support my debt coverage. But I would probably, I'd probably got two properties in one of those smaller markets. But you know, I might have a old fishing pole in the water on some of those larger markets. If something were to come up, I'd cast a wider net, you know, it's a busier acquisition time. So that's why we deployed by SFR, I would look at those smaller markets max, loan to value most of it… That is what I would do, went a little bit long didn't it… Ehmm, yeah. Done…   Michael: Love it. Would you buy… Would you buy both in the same market? Do you think it would use spread them out? Peanut butter spread, as they say…   Tom: I would probably buy them in the same market. Again, like so important to that to develop a thesis when investing in me is a little bit less overhead. So just using a single property manager, you know, doing that work and finding the right property manager, maybe having them help me out on the acquisition side, as far as evaluating neighborhoods and whatnot. So yes, it's a market. Good question, Michael.   Michael: Love it, love it, love it.   Emil: So, Michael, what would you do?   Michael: I think I'm taking that 50,000 and like Tom gonna go get some debt. But I am probably going to go buy a multifamily building, something a little bit bigger that I could, you know, really, really scale with. And it's probably going to be a little more turnkey, because having done the whole multifamily value, add thing, it can often be a lot more expensive than first anticipated. So something that's, you know, relatively easy, stable. That's why you may go to but in close second, what I'm also going to be considering is going and using a 15%, down DSCR loan and going to go purchase a short term rental, which would probably be a single family out in one of those vacation markets that are out there. But I think it can be a really, really, really great use of cash to generate quick income to then go to buy additional properties.     Emil: Michael, for anyone who doesn't know, what is a stable multifamily property, what does that look like?   Michael: Yeah, it's something that has, it's really good question. First off, it's something that has probably already been rehabbed, either extensively or lightly, doesn't have a whole lot of deferred maintenance, rent is probably going to be pretty close to at market rent. So I'm not going to feel the need to, to get new tenants in place when their leases are expiring, because they're already up at market rent. Just something that has been taken care of, or well maintained. Doesn't need a whole lot of CapEx.   Tom: Short term rentals are interesting. How do you find your overhead as an owner relative to your multifamily single family versus long term versus short term rental? Do you find it pretty similar? I would imagine that there's obviously range like there's variants with each of them, but just general ality generally speaking…   Michael: Yeah, it's a big range and it so depends on like my older vintage multifamily, it's gonna be a little bit even less than some of the expense ratio on that just because that has a lot more maintenance, regular, recurring maintenance type issues. On newer single families, comparing across the board to long term versus short term, short term is definitely more expensive from an expense ratio standpoint. But the income generated is still stronger. And so from a cash on cash return, it's it's still performing quite quite well.   Tom: I bought this as a metric, number of times you as an owner, you have to like make a decision or get involved.   Michael: Oh, see, short term versus long term?   Tom: Yeah, yeah, I would think I mean, I would assume short term rental, like there's a little bit more overhead as an owner. Is that wrong?   Michael: Yeah, I don't think that that's, I would say that there is more on the front end. So like we were involved in the decorations and decision making process around what amenities to include, but from a day to day…   Tom: … FF&E and OS&E those are some acronyms, Michael…     Michael: What's a OS&E?   Tom: Oh, OS&E is operating supplies in equipment, and FF&E is furniture, fixtures and equipment.   Michael: Ahhh!   Tom: No big deal, just drop an acronym…   Emil: A unit count into, what's going on here?   Michael: Yeh, sounds like an accounting term.   Tom: I know about luxury man.   Michael: You're just steeped in luxury. But no, I would say other than that. It's pretty much about as hands off as as long term if not more. So. I've really I've made very few decisions, I've been involved in very few of the conversations, we're looking at converting the garage into additional space so that of course, there's a lot more involvement in but that would be the same as if I was doing some kind of rehab work on a long term rental.   Tom: I heard a great story a description of short term rentals as comparing them to fire trucks and that they're constantly getting turned and washed like a fire truck has been around but oh, it gets it gets a fresh wash every time it goes out. So like while you might think it's a you know, getting beat up a lot it perhaps it is but it's it's getting a lot of Washington. It's like a fire truck. I don't know. I like that.   Michael: Yeah, I think I mean, I think so and it's getting eyes in it every turn. So the festering kind of long term deferred maintenance stuff tends to not be again, for my experience as big of an issue because there's people constantly putting eyes on stuff. And if there's an issue you'll hear about it immediately. Like these tenants are going to tell you because they're paying good money to be in these places. Hey, this is an issue you need to fix it.   Emil: Are you is your short term rental being professionally managed, do you have a property manager?   Michael: Yes, yeah, I'm a full service property manager, I definitely pay for it. But I'm not. I'm not at the point where I can set, you know, neither myself or my wife or I are at the point where we have enough time to be able to learn how to do that remotely for this particular property. And you know, if anyone listening is interested in learning more about short term rentals, we did a podcast episode with Avery Carl, which was a phenomenal episode, in my opinion, where she talks all about the short term rental market, and short term rentals in general and things you need to be aware of, if you're going to get involved in this space.   Tom: Did you pencil… Emil needs to give his answer, but just really last question I have on that… Did you pencil it as a longer term rental as well, just to like, see what…   Michael: I did. And it doesn't work. And so I had to always take in the opinion that it has to work as both because if something changes, I don't want to be stuck holding the bag. And after extra chatting with Avery about the short term rental market, this is out in the Smokies. She was like yeah, but the thing of it is, is the regulations aren't going to change out there. Like it is such a through and through short term vacation rental market, that she is not concerned with it being the next Santa Monica or Santa Monica, city regulators come in and say I can't do Airbnb, because it's always been short term rentals. So that's given me a lot more comfort to say, okay, I'm okay, kind of taking that leap of having it only makes sense as a vacation rental?   Emil: Well, I had one final question. I asked Michael about the third party property manager because I, what I really want to know is how does your time commitment with a third, like you have property management and on a long term and a short term? How does your monthly time commitment in terms of speaking with your property manager being involved? Like how, how much more time is it with the short term compared to long term, if any?   Michael: You know, I have probably spent less time with the short term manager than I have with long term management. I was so impressed by this company, they've been awesome and they're just like really good at what they do. And I think that universally speaking, that's kind of what I would expect in the long term world as well, I have my that one of the best property managers I have is up in Alaska, I hear from him, like once a quarter, unless we're just calling to check, you know, checkup and chew the fact sort of thing. So if a property manager is good at their job, you really shouldn't hear from them, in order for you to make decisions, they could update you and tell you what's going on and this and that. But from a decision making standpoint, if I have to hear from you and talk to you regularly, like it's probably not going very well. Right Emil how would you spend in those 50 G's?       Emil: For me, if I'm just starting out, and I want to invest in real estate, I'm, I like single family as a first starting point. And we can debate this later on a showdown. I think single family is a good way to get started, I think having one tenant, one unit to worry about just a lot less hectic. And so I'd start with a single family, I would want to do a tier two city, somewhere where the climate isn't so severe, right? Like I have properties in Indianapolis and every winter, I'm like, man, our pipes gonna freeze and explode. You know, you hear all those stories. Usually, if you have a tenant who's there, like they're running the water, and that doesn't happen. But you know, if you have a turn in the winner, always think that could happen. So I choose something with a little bit less harsh climate, just because it's going to keep everything solid for a little bit longer. And I'd probably just use it on one property to get something a little bit better, ewe just talked about on a different episode, six things we wouldn't do, again, six mistakes and for me it was buying a really cheap property on the… in the beginning, I get something a little bit nicer, less headache, you know, newer build, that's just going to be an easy learning process for me, because the first one isn't going to be the make or break. It's really you're just like learning how to deal with real estate how to deal with the property manager all this stuff. So having it be something that's going to be better long term is what I would prioritize.   Michael: Are you okay, accepting less cash flow?   Emil: I wasn't in the beginning and on the other end of it now, yes, you should like it's not going to be a huge difference. You think it will be and you know, excel math will tell you different but it's a different story. I think when you get into it.   Michael: How much cash flow, how small of a cash flow are you willing to accept and still consider it cashflow positive?   Emil: For me like even like if you're being conservative, right, like not going oh, best case scenario, right? You're ending up with like at least $50 of cash flow a month right? I think that's a good place to be at least obviously, I…   Tom: Got to beat inflation, got to beat inflation.   Michael: Beat it back with a stick…   Emil: We don't, you know, we're just talking about cash flow and again, these this isn't going to be a make or break for you. You're trying to learn and you're trying to grow. You also have equity building right in a better property that's going to be more dollar like appreciation. 10% appreciation on something that's $250,000 Verse $100,000, you're gonna make more than that equity anyway, right? It's appreciating, it's a higher appreciation.   Michael: So you're sticking to one, one property… One more expensive property?   Emil: Yes, yeah.   Michael: Alright.   Emil: Not even just expensive to be expensive just better quote like a turnkey, nicely done property that I'm not going to have a ton of headache right out the gate.   Michael: Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.   Tom: It's been a few seconds on zero scape, just installed some fake turf on my backyard. It's killer man.   Michael: Is it good?   Tom: Yeah, yeah. And then like if leaves come on it you get the power washer. And just like my my own little zen…   Michael: What about dog puppies?   Tom: That's a thing. But you know, that's where the power washer. And also that's where gates like preventing the dog to go out there. Come in…   Emil: Anyway, anyways, you could also have a dog like mine who we have we have turf in the backyard too. It's like turf in concrete. And he is afraid of it doesn't like walking on turf. So he makes us take him out in the front yard where there's real grass to go. So that's fun.   Tom: He is natural… Michael: Some… double apply.   Emil: He's a purist. He's got a good taste.   Tom: Good for him.   Michael: So Tom, are you saving some of that 50,000, so you can install zero scaping in this investment property?   Tom: Yeah, probably. I mean, the right warranties are in place with the Zero Escape. You're like basically making money when you install it, so…   Michael: Are you, are you working on zero escape installation side hustle?   Tom: I am yeah, I got a, I got a, I got some, I got some hints.   Michael: You need a guy, I got a guy…   Emil: Probably not that awesome on a rental property. Like the ROI on that is, is not great.   Tom: Nooo, problem.   Michael: Depends on who is paying this utilities though…   Emil: Yeah…   Michael: If you include these utilities in your bill…   Emil: It's your tenant.   Tom: Oh…There could be markets Emil, before you jump the gun. There could be markets with it makes a ton of sense, Las Vegas, Arizona…   Emil: I prefer talking generalities, we're not getting into nuance on this on this podcast, sorry…   Michael: I thought you only spoken absolutes.   Emil: That's it, that's it…   Michael: Now you're speaking in generalities. Man pick one Emil.   Tom: Yeah.   Emil: Ehmm, absolute is what I met. It's not... Moving on. Alright, what do we do with $50,000 now? If $50,000 is now, in your investing career, what are you guys doing? You're not a beginner, you're at your stage now, so what's next?   Tom: I am making the transition to getting some multifamily, you know, I don't know, I don't actually know short term, Michael's got me hyped up on some learn a lot more about short term, I don't know. I'm all over the place right now. This is what I'm gonna do, this is what I am gonna do actually, I'm going to set up a coaching session with Michael and we're going to go through some options and get to the root of it. I swear to God, that's like the real answer, right.   Emil: That is actually a very solid strategy. Alright, Michael 50,000, I feel like I know where you're, where you're putting money, but if 50,000, where's it going?   Michael: Yeah. Now in today's world, I'm probably splitting that. Truth be told I'm probably do you like for sure a short term rental 50% down DSCR loan, and then I'll probably wait half or two thirds and then I'm taking the other half and I'll probably park it in a syndication to be perfectly honest and just kind of enjoy the passivity that syndications provide. It's, we've been doing a lot of podcasts recently and had a lot of passive investment experts on talking about benefits, pros cons of passive investing, and I'm like, huh at this stage of my career, it's definitely sounds interesting. My back's already, you know, a little tired from from caring so much. So I'm ready to slow down a little bit and just kind of enjoy the fruits of the labor.   Emil: Nice, yeah. I'm sagging into what I'd do, I'm right there with you. So I like that I have nowhere near the amount of units like you, right that I own directly, I have six units. I think that's perfect for me and where I'm at right now, I would put $50,000 honestly, either in a REIT or yeah, in a in a private deal or something like that. Something where I'm going to be completely passive. Just given we've got two little kids, we got the six units again, that we own directly and that takes off takes up enough time and you know, business I started a year ago that's taking up a lot of time as well and attention. So I'd be looking for something passive to pocket.   Michael: I love the fact that Emil, you mentioned that you have like little kids and so you're kind of at this stage in your life where the active hands on direct investment isn't a great fit for you. But that could easily change and so you go park your money and one of these indications. Hopefully it doubles or better in a couple years' time and then you get it back and you get to decide okay, well what I want to do next I want to continue the passive route now maybe the kids a little bit older, you have more time on your hands to do something else. So I love it. I think it's, it's such a good point that there's like seasonality to this whole investing thing.   Emil: Yeah, it's not like, I'm done direct investing. It's, I'm done direct investing right now. Like, we have what we have, we're good, we're not getting rid of those and it's time for a different strategy. But you know, life changes, maybe you have a windfall, whatever, and you're like, now I'm bored. And I want to go do something more challenging and I'm gonna go do some, some value add stuff myself, maybe even like, in a market closer to me, or what did you know there are just so many different ways you can take this and it's not like those strategies you start with is going to be the strategy you end with.   Michael: Mike drop Emil out.   Emil: Don't listen to me, I don't know what I'm talking about.   Michael: That's great, man. I love it, I love it… Should we get out of here?   Emil: Yeah, let's do it.   So thanks, everybody, appreciate you tuning in for another episode, hope you got some value out of this one. And as always, please leave us a review or subscribe if you're watching on YouTube. We love seeing that number go up, it boosts your ego and it keeps us coming back every week. So we'll catch you all in the next one. Happy investing.   Michael: Happy investing.  

Jen málo hostů si vysloužilo druhé pozvání do studia. Tomáš Soóky však zastupuje téma, které má exponenciální křivku růstu ve své oblibě v průmyslových aplikacích. Zatímco v dřívějším povídání se zdálo, že opravdu profesionální využití v je v průmyslu doménou hrstky nadšenců, o nových aplikacích se dnes dozvídáme ze stále větší základny firem. Jaké výhody v něm uživatelé nacházejí? A proč roste jeho obliba právě teď, vždy samotné téma 3D tiskáren je staré již více než 40 let! Pamatujte: kdo chvíli stál, stojí už opodál... Pokračujeme v druhé série úspěšného spojení podcastu Vše o průmyslu a aktivit organizace INDUSTRY CLUSTER 4.0. Když jsme se prvně pod hlavičkou BRNO INDUSTRY 4.0 spojili v hledání zajímavých hostů, přineslo nám to do studia další inspiraci. I nyní přináší zajímavá jména pro naše tradiční rozhovory.  BRNO INDUSTRY 4.0, to není jen respektovaná odborná konference, mapující zásadní změny průmyslu s nástupem nové generace technologických změn.  BRNO INDUSTRY 4.0, to je komplexní platforma a iniciativa INDUSTRY CLUSTERu 4.0, která vzdělává, inspiruje, sdílí dobrou praxi, umožňuje setkávání a výměnu zkušeností odborníků z oblasti digitalizace a technologií pro moderní výrobu. Mimochodem 6. ročník konference BRNO INDUSTRY 4.0 se uskuteční 19. a 20. ledna 2022 a budě opět věnován všem aktuálním tématům a technologiím z oblasti digitalizace a flexibilní výroby. Zapište si do kalendáře, jste srdečně zváni. Sledujte INDUSTRY CLUSTER 4.0 na LinkedIn nebo webu www.ic40.cz. Platforma BRNO INDUSTRY 4.0 je finančně podporována Jihomoravským krajem, krajem který chce zůstat krajem inovací a moderních technologií.

Author of Happy Ever After, The 7 Dollar Millionaire, joins us again to shed light on the complex world of personal finances. He shares tips on getting started, saving money, and aligning your goals with your family to work your way to financial peace of mind one step at a time. --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The remote real estate investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the real estate investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by my co host,   Tom: Tom Schneider.   Michael: And with us we have a very special repeat guests, the 7 Dollar Millionaire, if you recall, he wrote a book that we had him on chatting about Happy Ever After. And today, he's going to be talking to us again about personal finances, some things you can do to get started, as well as how to talk to your spouse or significant other or partner about personal finance. So let's get into it.   Michael: Awesome. Mr.7 Dollar Millionaire, thank you for joining us again, we so looking forward to recording with you.   7 Dollar Millionaire: It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me back on that says, this is a first for me. No one's ever invited me.   Michael: Well, hopefully the first of many. So how have you just curious how are things out in Singapore?   7 Dollar Millionaire: Things are just improved. Yesterday, we had like a mini re lockdown. So they call it circuit breaker here for about a month. Because there was a bit of a spike in cases. But that ended yesterday. The big change is very little apart from Oh, you're now allowed to go to restaurants, their restaurants are all closed. That's pretty much it. Gyms are kind of reopening slowly, that kind of stuff. But yeah, that was that was nice. It's nice to kind of go and get a meal somewhere, you know. But otherwise, it's you know, as with a lot of Asia, they're taking that kind of minimal risk approach to it.   So I mean, even when there was a spike, it was like 100 cases a day. 5 million people, right? I mean, it's still a very low number.   Michael: Yeah. But everybody in your world is healthy and safe.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Oh, yeah. Thanks. And you guys are on good.   Michael: Yeah, we just chatted with some family friends of ours yesterday, and they are double vaccinated. But she and her daughter just got his tested positive. So she had a breakthrough case. So she's feeling pretty crummy at the moment. But I'm hoping that she's hoping she's not going to go to the hospital or anything like that. So the breakthrough cases don't seem to be as severe as the unvaccinated stuff.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Fingers crossed. Yeah, fingers crossed. touchwood. Right. That's that's the big hope. As long as it stays like that we can live with it. Right?   Tom: I have a friend who had a breakthrough case who's also vaccinated. And he's got a wife and three little kids and his wife and three little kids didn't, didn't catch it. So he's hanging by himself. And you know, I feel much more for his wife, who's managing a house full of Toddlers and Babies versus him who's just hanging out at their their lake. Well, he's men. He's on the men. He's feeling much better. But it's Yeah, really.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Did she get did she get like a second opinion on that? Right. Yeah.   Michael: Thank goodness.   Tom: Yeah. Doing recovering. Well, good, good.   Michael: Well, Tom, it's it's funny as the wrong word. But interesting. This kind of segues nicely into what we want to chat with the 7 Dollar Millionaire about today. Again, circling back and talking some more about personal finance. But a question that I have is, so often people have these target goals in mind, and whether that's net worth or cash flow monthly annual basis. But that's so often based on today's needs, for their whatever family is currently in the picture. And I've got to imagine that changes over time. And so as someone who doesn't have kids, I don't have a really good sense of what kids costs, it could be 20 bucks a day, it could be 100 bucks it you know, I don't have a good sense for that. So how do you recommend folks think about not only their cash flow needs for today, but also for their future selves, as they continue to age but also as additional family members may enter the picture?   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a there's no right answer, right?   Michael: I mean, I mean, oh, well, then we can we can we can cancel the show. We're done here.   7 Dollar Millionaire: There's just no single one right answer. I mean, the first step with the first answer to this is actually just taking the first step start actually doing some work, right. I think I was working recently with talking about how you make all the progress in personal finance. And a lot of people are discouraged because they think they can't come up with an answer. And it's like painting, right? The first blob of paint on the on the canvas doesn't look like the painting You can't expect it to you go put it on, put it on, put it on. Only after a long time does it actually start to get to the real picture, and it's the same, it's exactly the same with this. You just got to start doing the work. And starting doing the work is actually working out what you want your kids to be like, what kind of life you want to live with them where it's going to be, and the kinds of expenses you're going to have.   So you can roll that stuff out pretty easily. I mean, so For me, because I was an expert, I had to put my kids in international school, there's some serious education expenses. You know, it's like the, for me, when my kids went to college, they got cheaper. I mean, that doesn't happen very often, right? My kids got a lot cheaper when I was paying for them to live in a foreign country, flying them backwards and forwards and paying college fees, they were cheaper than the local education costs for me.   So that's how individually these things can be right? I mean, you just have to do that. So you have to look forward and you think, okay, and I'll give you perfect opposite example, really good friend of mine used to live like five floors below where I had seen the apartment block right here. He's got for various reasons, he ended up with like, kind of one of those joint families who so like, five kids under the age of five, you know, bizarrely, and really bonded, situated,   Tom: Yeah, Brady Bunch situation.   7 Dollar Millionaire: And he's, he's like a, he's a fund manager, based in Singapore. And he worked out that he could actually, it made sense for him to quit his job and move back to California, because paying for five kids in local education system here, when you know, that, and everything else, it's cheaper to move to a place with a good free education system and have a normal job rather than trying to have a high paid job and pay those kinds of costs.   So that's how individual all of these kinds of decisions get to be. The first thing is just to sit down and, and dream a little, right, exactly. Who do you want your kids to be? And how do you want to live with them. And because a lot of the costs, like your actual food costs, it's not a big deal, it's really not going to be an enormous deal. So the basic, you know, adding one bedroom to the house may or may not be a big deal, depending on on where you're at. And then after that is things like education and flying, holiday is right, they do cost literally an extra person on every single thing you do, when you start and that's times 20 years, right?   So there's, there's some, there's a lot of extra costs on that kind of stuff. And it's really just sitting down and working out those kinds of things, and those kinds of budgets. And then as you move closer, closer towards the end, you'll realize exactly what is going on, you'll get a much closer impression. But as always, it's just start, just sit down with a piece of paper and just go, Okay, I think it could be this, and then find out the extra information that you'd actually need. Because it can be a scary amount, or it can be really, if someone for someone like me, that was having to pay man it was 15 years of 14 years of school fees. I don't want to think what that was, you know, really, I definitely don't want to, you know, PV it, I mean, that's just insane amount of money. But you know, had to be done for In my case, if you don't have that you don't need to put it in.   Tom: I love that analogy of the paint, and it just kind of evolving a little bit over time. As far as, you know, practically getting the paint down, would you recommend a model where, say this is in Excel, and each row is like a year, and then, you know, perhaps there's some different sort of expenses within the different rows, or it's just like a really kind of basic form of that is that sort of a rough construct is, and I'm sure it's you know, could be a little unique for everyone. But that's immediately where my mind goes is seeing in that sort of a model.   7 Dollar Millionaire: That's definitely where I think you move it, I actually like to do a pen and paper to start with, I think there's a, there's kind of a free flow, when you're actually kind of sit down with pen and paper and just as scribble stuff out. I've even tried doing it on my iPad with you know, like the sketch but it doesn't work as well, there isn't that sort of connection, which sitting there with a piece of piece of paper and a pen for 10 minutes, and just sort of scribbling out the bunch of the cost because we're all prepared to be kind of messy on a piece of paper, right, and we can just draw in things and loop them around, that connects to that, scribble that out and need this.   And then once you've got probably only 10 minutes in, you can move that to a spreadsheet, seven or eight lines, seven or eight lines is going to get you most of the way to the kind of things you're thinking about.   Michael: And Tom, I'm curious not to put you on the spot here in the hot seat but having a young child is this an exercise that you went through with your wife and was this conversations that you had prior to the little one arriving?   7 Dollar Millionaire: You know, I was actually so I'm in my mid 30s now and when I was in my mid 20s and early 20s actually was way more active about kind of performing out like 20-30 years in advance so I actually had to pull back the old spreadsheets pain analogy I think it's probably time to have another round I love these interviews with you 7 Dollar Millionaire I literally after our last call that we had I went and totally redid all my you know auto deposit into my investing and I already have some immediate action items from from this one. So just to kind of go back I was I not not so much with these with with my current kid but I think it's an exercise to go revisit some work that I did in my mid 20s.   7 Dollar Millionaire: It's always good to know right? It's also good to know how good you are at modeling. Where you make mistakes and modeling, I mean, we we professionally we do that. And it's you know, you can be miles out. But if you actually, I mean, there's a company modeling, we're actually modeling like an investment will have various inputs that we can that we can change them to go back and you look and go, Oh my god, I was miles out, but then you realize that one of the inputs was x, y, zed, which turned out not to be remotely true. So you can, okay, then change that. And sometimes it kind of comes back to closer to reality. So all these things are really, really important to actually just understand how well you model because it's not like you have to stop modeling, or you never stop acts.   And modeling is like, it sounds like it's too specific to what we do. But we're all forecasting all of the time. Now, my favorite analogy for forecasting and how we're all forecasting all the time, is we all pretty much expect chairs not to break when we sit in them, right?   I mean, even some of my weight, I don't expect the chair to break when I sit in it. But I pretty certainly if you if you sat on three chair, three different chairs in a row, and they broke every time, that fourth chair, you'd be like pushing it scratching it thinking, Okay, is this thing solid, you'd have lost all your trust in chairs, that's just forecasting. It's just natural forecasting. We do it all the time. And so knowing if you're good or bad at it is a is an amazing life skill.   Tom: Do you find that most people are overly optimistic when forecasting I guess you could apply this to business or to kind of personal? I'd love to hear your kind of thoughts on, I guess human nature and in applying forecasts and ways to beat yourself and be better at it.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, I honestly, unfortunately, it really it is really bad answer. But 50% of people are better than average. And there's no other way of looking at it. I think the key is most of us aren't doing it particularly consciously most of the time. And so sense of like actual aware forecasting and awareness of how optimistic or pessimistic we tend to be. Pessimists, I mean, pessimism is one of the reasons that overcaution is what keeps a lot of people out of the markets. Right. And because they think of it as markets, right, they don't think of it as I'm working. I'm living in this economy, and not being in it with my capital is essentially an enormous risk that this economy is going to crash and burn. I'm literally taking that investment option. And not seeing it that way keeps them out because they view it as being very, very high risk and pessimistic because they don't understand it enough.   Let's throw some analogies around that's just like being in the dark, right? It's just being in the dark, you can walk out into your hallway with no light, and you can't find your way along the hallway anymore. Right? That's, it's it's still there. Everything's exactly where I was people without the education. I mean, we're moving back into financial education, right. It's what keeps people out. It's they're unsure, they're in the dark. And that's why I think creates most of the pessimism and overcaution around it.   Yeah, there's a bunch of people who, too, you know, too optimistic, too. But that's what I mean. I tend not to mind it when when investing, I don't engage over optimism. But when I'm doing things like a little bit more entrepreneurial, then yeah, I shoot for the moon. There's just no point right? or shoot for the stars even then you get the moon there's no point not being no point starting an endeavor without thinking it's going to be amazing.   Michael: Yeah, I love that analogy about being in the dark. I wonder though, your take on, when people have gotten out into the hallway realize that it's not that scary. Or maybe they've gotten a little flashlight, it a little bit of education, they understand. And now they think, Well, I know everything. And so how does that that little bit of education, a little bit of knowledge, not get overblown, and a bit turned into overconfidence, where now you are taking risks, well beyond your your light beam, so to speak.   Tom: Great point, Michael.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, it, it's it's actually why I think it's so important. This gets taught in schools. And, you know, there's, there's a bunch of different sides on this. But it's, that's why, you know, why are we confident reading? Right, we're confident reading because we've been taught it at such a young age, right? This is this is how we have that kind of confidence. Why are we not confident in a foreign language? Because we weren't taught it. We don't know any of the words, we don't know how this thing's put together. And we need that it's, it's about having that broad underpinning to what we do, and it's why it needs to be taught in schools because any other way, you're coming in at some random entry point, right?   So some friend tells you the you know, you should trade options on Robin Hood because I made x, y, zed and then you kind of get in there and you learn a little bit about it. Maybe you have like some Beginner's luck and you do quite well. That's now your little wheelhouse. It may just may be a good wheelhouse for you. It may be a terrible one. More likely the second option, right. So that becomes your think that's what you need that we need the education to make sure we get a little bit of light in all areas.   I mean, I'll give you a perfect example for this. I so the CFA exams Chartered Financial Analyst. I'm not one I did level one.I got way too busy to do levels two and three, my first daughter was born like immediately after getting level one. And level one even just shows you the entire spectrum. So you kind of you get like a beginners entry level on everything. And that's like, you kind of you know where to come back to later. Right? If I need to calculate a bond price, I can't do it off the top of my head, but I know where to read. I know where to look. And then I'd know how to do it. And that, obviously, that's a little bit specific for most people. But that kind of general entry level stuff is I think, you know, what's needed otherwise, you do end up with the flashlight, or moving from analogies. Under the under the street lamp looking for their keys, right?   You know, the stories like, you know, and the guy's looking for his keys under the street lamp and a piece of wedge, you lose them over there. So why are you looking here? Well, this is where the light is, right? That's it's so important to just have like a basic level of light.   Tom: To know what you don't know. Definitely.   Michael: Yeah, that's Yeah. I'm curious to know, in your opinion, if someone is looking to invest in the next 12 months, they're looking to get educated and wanting to get involved, whatever investment class they deem is in their wheelhouse, where should they be keeping those funds? Should that be something that they're investing the whole time labeling? And, you know, dollar cost averaging? Or should they kind of wait till they have enough funds to do something with curious to get your thoughts?   7 Dollar Millionaire: Okay, well, always dot dollar cost average, unless there's like a ticket price that, you know, makes that unavoidable that you have to go in single level, like, like some kinds of property, right, where you have to have a certain amount of downpayment, and that's the minimum you can get involved. The great thing about other asset classes is you can dollar cost average in the tiniest amounts. And you always should, I mean, cuz, you know, you can't predict the future, you don't know if it's gonna go up or down, right. So you should try and remove as much of that risk as possible. And dollar cost averaging is the is the free way of doing that.   Michael: Right.   7 Dollar Millionaire: So right, so always dollar cost averaging, I think there's a one thing that I quite like is what I think of it in my head is like a reverse ladder. So you know how you have ladders on fixed deposits, time deposits, whatever they call them. In the US, you know, where you can get kind of get like a little bit more return, if you lock the money into a deposit account for longer, let's say three months, six months, whatever it is, and you stagger it in. So you put in like a sixth this month and a six the next month, and then you do that over six months. So you got the money, you got access to six of the money every single month, you can put it put it into those and then actually dollar cost into the thing you're putting it into. So you can sort of you're still making a little bit of money doesn't have to sit as pure cash. Right.   Michael: So so go get six CDs.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, exactly.   Michael: on six month intervals. And okay, gotcha.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, exactly right. And then you can just plug it straight in. And you might only be making like an extra, like a few bucks. But this is how you make money, right is by it's like that little extra, which for no risk, right? That's always the key a little bit extra, no risk is better than a lot extra for a lot of risk. So just that just that small, those small moves are always useful.   But I think also one of the other things to do is depending on the asset class, if if what you're doing, if the cash you've got is a long way away from the asset class, then it does make sense to have some kind of hedge if it's possible. So I mean, I think one of the things often is say, like, being able to put some of the money into a REIT in advance of buying a property.   So let's say if there's like, if you're going to buy property in New York for some reason, then there's a new york rate, if you can do enough analysis around that read to understand it's like, oh, this is, this is pretty similar, this should go up when my property goes up, it should go down when my property goes down, you can at least put some of the money as you're building towards that downpayment into the REIT and then hedge out a little bit of that extra risk. Because, I mean, the risk on property is nearly always, everywhere in the world, the government prints more money, right? I mean, properties actually don't…   Micheal: Inflation.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, well, yeah, properties don't often go up in value, your money goes down in value in terms of property, right, that's what actually happens. So actually, removing that risk is is is useful. So I'd always think through these ways, rather than thinking, yeah, just chucking money in now. Just steady push it in steadily as it's just if you can, if you have the patience.   Tom: That's a that's a good discipline. I mean, it kind of related as an act of discipline I can think of like going to a, like a kiss going to Las Vegas or something and playing blackjack and it's like, oh, do I push it all in on one hand or do I slowly and you're gonna have a better time to her a little bit slower. I guess that kind of really kind of relates to having fun at the casino versus having fun at.   7 Dollar Millionaire: It is a good point because I do the exact opposite. I really don't like being in casinos and when I'm forced to go to them, I put it all in on one hand and literally   Michael: Walk away.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Just like get this over and done with either make a lot of money on one hand, or we are I'd leave and have a better time than I would do by sitting at a blackjack table, losing money steadily.   Michael: I love how you knew kind of exactly where I was going with the question with regard to property investment. Because I mean, Tom you were in a similar situation with regard to you had some cash or cash out refinance, you were looking to deploy it. And in the meantime, you were thinking about putting it in the market, and I think you ultimately did. And then there was some fluctuation in the market. And you're like, Whoa, this is not this is not feeling good. So you pull back a little bit, right?   Tom: Yeah, yeah, just, I think like within, there's more, like risky allocations, and then safer allocations. And I think, being cognizant of kind of which risk profile I was investing, versus the strategy I initially did was go running up to the blackjack table and throwing it all down. And, you know, thankfully, didn't get getting didn't get burned too bad. But, you know, stepped back away and left the casino and invested in a nice asset allocation that was comfortable for the time horizon at which I wanted to spend it. So..   7 Dollar Millionaire: That's I mean, that's, that's, that's also the other point is actually nothing wrong with taking a second most important thing of investing is actually understanding your own psychological needs, because you can't invest against them. It's really, really hard to actually invest in a way that you don't think is correct for you. So taking too much risk. And just I mean, I don't have sleepless nights with what I do for a living. Because I don't invest in a way that is wrong. For me. I actually feel like I understand what I do. Whenever I hear people like they have sleepless nights like that's because your style investing does not match what you actually believe. I mean, that just can't be. That can be the only reason I think what you did, there was smart.   So the only way I've done this in the past is that I buy I bought properties in the past in, in foreign countries I have bought in Singapore, once I buy in the UK, I bought in Japan, I bought in Australia, one of the things when I know I'm going to do that is I immediately switch the money into that currency. If I think it's cheap, I think it's expensive. I don't.   But I try and you know, work because current currency, and I do sometimes take a view on the currencies. So you know, but that's it's that kind of move. So for example, I think I kept I think I kept just cash in a deposit in Sterling for about three years before I bought a property there because I wanted to take away because it was cheap. And I wanted to remove the currency risk, that it would get more expensive at that particular time. Basically, the moment Brexit happened and the pound and the pound collapsed, I put money into Sterling, because I knew I'd be thinking about buying a house not long after,   Michael: I think I've mentioned this to you in the past, Michael, but I really took it on the nose with the currency exchange because I bought a place in Portugal. And it was right around February, January, when we were looking at doing a transaction and the dollar against the Euro was like 94 cents. And it has just continued to climb and climb and climb. And so this is going to be great. This is going to be an equal transaction, by the time I go to actually pull the trigger. And so I waited, waited, waited and then COVID hit and the dollar just tanked. And I really got taken to the carwash on that one.   So I think that makes sense is if if you if you know what it is today, that's worth something and how you feel about it, I think is also important, but also a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Well, it's it's actually a lot of these things is understanding future liabilities, and not just your existing liabilities, but your future liabilities. And that's one of the ones like with kids, right? You're going to have these are future liabilities, you've got costs down the road. And if you know that you've got, you want to have a place in Portugal, then if you think the currencies pretty decent, and you know, you don't have a view either way, you can just put that money into into euros immediately and just remove that risk, right, there's no risk now. Right?   If that money wa s just gonna sit, and you could have it in euros doing something else, I mean, you can still take another risk on top of that, but at least you've closed off that currency risk. And currencies, they move around a lot. I mean, there's, you know, within like a two or three year timeframe, they can really shift. And that's a risk that's nice not to have or even potentially gain you can make rather than, you know, taking that huge risk.   Tom: So backtracking Just a minute, a little bit ago, you were talking about if you were to evaluating buying property in New York, and you know, parking it into a REIT in that space. I never and then you know, you can research that read I never thought of that, because they're sort of there's this is, you know, primarily single family rental investors. There are single family rental REITs out there. And is the idea to maybe to to learn more about that specific REITs that you're going into that asset class like to benchmark what kind of returns you what are my totally hearing this on a different?   7 Dollar Millionaire: I think you know more about the US property market than I do. So I'm, uh, yeah, you're probably hearing things I don't know, all I mean is is as close as you can remove risk, I'm not talking about actually   Tom: Sure getting as close.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, the closer the asset thing, the asset class you're going to buy, you're removing as much risk as you possibly can. So if it's in similar geography, in a similar asset class in a similar geography, it still may not correlate, and there's nothing you can do about that there may be a problem with the REIT, and there may be a problem with a manager and maybe a problem with something else. But if you're going to buy commercial property in New York State, if you can find a commercial property right, in New York State, yeah, then maybe maybe there'll be reasonably correlated, and you're taking a risk there, that, you know, there's no reason for cash to be correlated to it, there's definitely no reason for any other asset class to be correlated to that thing. So just a little bit of work and probably find you, okay, what's the new what's the New York State REIT, which ones are similar? Bang, okay, that one might reduce my costs and reads tend to pay pretty good dividends as well. So you actually could get paid out while you're doing it. So the return could be stronger, while being more correlated. And that's kind of all you're aiming for. with that.   But I mean, I'm gonna say as well, I don't know, if I mentioned on last couple of one of my it's a small family single, you know, real estate, is actually just such one of the best asset classes to be in as an individual. Just because it's not not something that big corporations do particularly well. And that's where it's sort of maybe steer clear of big corporations tend to do big properties very well, right. It's just like one guy making a decision pushes a button, and then the whole building does x, y, zed, right? Whereas when you look at what we all live in, so small fixer uppers, those single unit setup takes an enormous amount of management to run as a business.   So that's one of the reasons I love real estate as an asset class is because the world's capital is not trying to jump into this, right, it's just individuals doing the thing they do. So we can have an advantage. But within the REIT, maybe less if you get too specific, too granular. And I just sort of aim, you know, and the other thing would be to not get into to smaller thing, right? You want it to be liquid, you want it to be well traded, you know, one reasonably well known   Tom: That makes sense definitely.   Michael: Makes a ton of sense. I'm curious, Michael, do you have generic guidelines or principles when you're teaching, you know, financial education to folks around how much of someone's paycheck or how much someone's net worth should be broken down and spent on the different typical categories? So housing, or transportation or food entertainment? Do you have a pie chart that you that you utilize?   7 Dollar Millionaire: No. I mean, there is one, right. There's the 50 30 20, that is commonly used. And it's a great starting point, I actually think the 50 30 20 is a great starting point. But I think there's just too many examples of people who do way better than that, than I do. You know, you don't want to set the goalposts too easy, right? You know, you just come across people who are saving half or even three quarters of their of their income, and you don't want to tell them, You should save 20 it's similarly right, you know, it's just like, but the only one I really use is like, never go above like a third of your income on property.   And I think if you can keep it below that number, pretty much everything else starts to slide with it. Right? You start your cut, a lot of other costs are gonna be I mean, so in the book Happy Ever After I use 50 3020 as a starting point, but then say, Well, yeah, you know, but what if you could do 30 30 10? Right, you know, 30 30 30 30 30 40, because it would be, because 30 30 10 doesn't add up great. But if you can keep those costs down, all of those extra the 1530, way below those numbers, you're adding up to a much higher number on the 20. And that's the thing, I think, to use that 50 30 20 is a great thing to say to someone who's saving zero, or 5%.   Tom: Sorry, just to clarify the 5030 is 50% is your needs housing, grocery grocery, all that 30% is the ones and 20% savings. Is that the?   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's, I mean, it's not that I didn't invent that. I think that's a standard financial personal finance tool. And, you know, as as with the glob of paint, right, it's a great job of paint, unfortunately, it's kind of it sounds to 20 20% is gonna have you if you did it from the age of 20 20% is going to have you retired somewhere in your 60s. It's not amazing, right? That it's it's, it's better than not, but it's it's not amazing, and that's where I wouldn't want to see it to see us as I try to use it just as a general this is dob of pain. 20 is great, but if you want to do better, you should aim for better.   Michael: Yeah, that makes tons of sense. And I think that's great. I love I love that dob of paint analogy. I think it makes so much sense. I'm a very visual person. So that that resonates with me.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Cool. That's good. That's really good. Because it's because I wrote it for for a new book I'm working on. So I'm glad it works. I'm trying it out with you guys.   Michael: Are you really writing a new book?   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, yeah. This is actually the first morning in about three weeks I am, I've got up to talk to you guys instead of getting up to write. But I've been writing to non stop for last three weeks.   Michael: Awesome. Can Can we get a little preview as to what it's about?   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, it's it's an attempt to combine Zen mindfulness practice and personal finance. So I'm trying to map I'm trying to get that Venn diagram. I feel at the moment, those Venn diagrams are like, here, I'm just trying to merge them. But in many ways, I feel that they merge really easily. It's like, you know, it's what is tracking what is tracking your spending, if not being mindful of what you're doing?   Right. I mean, you sit down and journal but journal your expenses, right actually know what you're doing in life, I actually think they they align quite neatly, I just haven't seen anyone do it before. And, and I, one of the things I've realized more and more about personal finance is that the SEC, the same five or six things, we all need to know how to do the basics. But we need to approach every person in a slightly different way to get those five or six things in. Once you're in, you'll learn them really fast, but you need to get in.   And that's why I sort of just occurred to me will be a fun thing to do. So yeah, I need it to be fun. As well, I need to actually want to be able to, if I have to get up at six in the morning, I have to want to   Tom: Yeah, big, big mindfulness fan, I try and do have a personal retreat every year. And man, I can just see how a lot of those concepts of just being present is so relevant. And you can basically apply it to anything and it's so natural into, you know, the currency that, that our resources that we live off of its camp can't wait for it to talk more about it and for it to come out.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Cool. Well it come at it. Well, if I finish it, it should come out next year. That's exactly what it is. I mean, it is this sense of in every place in our finances, if you're not aware, they take control of you rather than the other way around. And if you can be aware and mindful of what you're doing. So even to the standard market to you over emotional, are you under emotional, you know, how are you what's actually going on in you, that is making you do things that are not to your benefit and understanding those things are such important drivers and in the in the space. So addressing all those things. Equally, what's quite nice is I feel like I can recycle the some of the Happy Ever After book as well, because the middle of the middle bit of this book is a man being the same steps mission, money income saving, spending, investing, owning now those steps.   And so rather than to using sort of like the fairy tale, we sort of really creating a path. And as with so many things on sort of mindfulness, this is a path, you have to understand the path and now you hear whether the dob of paint was coming in, right? Don't get upset that you don't know where you're at, you're just putting a dob of paint is just the first dollar painting this will build. And that's Yeah, that's why I'm so happy like the analogy cuz it's right up the front.   Michael: Oh, this is great. I'm very excited to read the book. I want to shift gears here a little bit. And I'm curious to know if you have any tips or tricks or guidelines for folks to have these types of financial, personal financial conversations with a spouse partner significant other, because so often I hear in the Roofstock Academy is Hey, I'm all on board for real estate, but my husband isn't, or my wife isn't or my partner isn't interested? How do you bring them in in a productive way?   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, it's hard. And you know, you, it's okay, we're gonna get back to the mindfulness, but just for a second, and I'll come back to this, right, because   Tom: It's all part of everything   7 Dollar Millionaire: You have to know is that you, you can only affect yourself, you can't create change outside yourself, you can only create change inside yourself. So you, you can't force a partner to come up to your speed when you want them to. So that's the number one understanding. So you got to be ready for them to not be prepared to do this.   The second thing is, it's why I wrote the book is for the original one happy ever after it was to outsource a lot of the conversation with this time, but that time with my daughter to paper, get her to read it. So I don't have to go through an enormous amount of the background of how this works, right? It I can just imagine it. When I realized my daughter didn't know anything about money. I was like, I've got a teach her this stuff. I don't want to spend every weekend for the next year having daddy daughter money lectures, because that's just you know, it's wrong.   Right? So but if I write her book, she can read it in their own pace, and we can have those conversations and she's already up to speed. Right? So to get some level of outsourcing so to encourage, could you read this book, have a look at this, what do you think about this, and then let the person do it in their own time. So they'll come up to speak because again, we go back to that you can only change you they have to change themselves on on their timeframe.   I think the other thing is too, sometimes it's useful just to have like a group budget as a track as a family exactly where all the money goes. Because that That, to me is like, is the starting point we're spending money on on these things. And you know, if there's any dispute, it's like, let's get the, let's get the receipts out, this is actually exactly where all our money went in the in this period. Because I think that's the, I think it's very difficult to jump from an investing mindset. Jump to it, without going through saving. And you have to warn you that that requires understanding your spending.   So those two things combined to be like, okay, we understand that what we're saving and what we're spending, okay, now we can invest our asset class, we can we can move on to as you said, How do I get my spouse to think about real estate, they're probably not thinking about it, because they're not probably not thinking about the saving and spending, the moment you think about your, I'm going to give up this spending to save the money, you tend to get a lot more interested in how much money that money is going to make for you. So you tend to get a lot more interested in the asset class. So I that's why I do see these things as being a 1234. And then you can get them interested in the asset class.   Tom: Maslow's hierarchy of conversations to have with your significant other. Yeah, it's, so this is a one would be, I guess, spending, saving, and then more offensive investing that I understand this kind of triangle correctly.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Okay, I will never allow spending to go in front of saving savings by okay. It's in the dictionary in the book in life saving comes first, right? Get the saving done first. And the saving is how you top up your yield. So the safe spending is cutting down on your spending is how you top up your savings. Right? Did you put the put the savings away first.   But yeah, and then once you've got savings, you need to do something with them. And so the thing you do with them is what asset class and then you can have those conversations. But if the person isn't engaged in the saving, right, then they're probably saying I don't want to invest in real estate, because actually, I'd rather be spending the money on a car.   And you've got to move the people have got to be with you on those steps. And it's, if then if they haven't got those fundamentals like Well, yeah, we could buy the car, but these savings will double in 10 years time and quadruple in 20, et cetera, et cetera. And then we'll be setting we can have as many cars as we want, if that's your thing. But let's just actually understand our priorities today, and where we want to be with that.   But I do think it's really important not to make that a face to face conversation too often, unless you're both open to that and let that someone like me, let an author let a book, let a TV show, do the heavy lifting, right? I mean, and then then have the conversation subsequently.   Michael: So for anybody listening, needing to broach this subject with a partner, spouse, you can either go get Happy Ever After by 7 Dollar Millionaire, that's great.   7 Dollar Millionaire: I couldn't have said it better myself. Love it, love it.   Michael: I know you're not really familiar with the US system of Roth versus non Roth, but we can talk about it in a higher level discussion. And so in the US, we have Roth and non Roth retirement accounts. A Roth is simply you pay the tax on the dollars that you invest on the front end, and then you get tax free growth and distributions on the back end, versus a non Roth is you get a tax benefit of reducing your taxable income today, it grows tax deferred, and then when you go to remove those dollars, it gets taxed at that point in time. Do you have a sense for pros cons, how people might be thinking about this?   7 Dollar Millionaire: The only thing that go into there is I'm assuming there are some other sub clauses in terms of what your access to the money in the intervening periods? Right? So I'm guessing from what you've said, that the one where you get, like, you pay tax now and you'd be don't pay tax on on the eventual money. You can only take it out on a certain date. And if you take it out between those dates, I'm assuming there's some kind of penalty as the as the price of actually getting a tax tax, tax free later on, are tax exempt.   Whereas the other one sounds more like well, if you know, you're actually if you're not being taxed on the money that goes in that's probably fairly similar. But I'm guessing it's probably a little bit freer money in terms of you can probably access it at any point in time.   Tom: The big gating factor between the two is there's limitations on who has access to use a Roth, this one that's taxed up front, and that your income needs to be under a certain level.   Michael: But the access to the funds are fairly similar in that you pay a penalty on both if you remove them before your retirement age. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think if you can afford it, you probably want to put the money away that you can take it out later tax free. That to me sounds like you know, because then you, hopefully if it's a long period of time, and it compounds reasonably well, that's a bigger number than the money you're putting in. And that's how the only thing I could think of that. Honestly, these things is weighing me up. I people make tax codes way too complicated.   It's just like they make tax codes complicated. And then don't teach financial literacy in schools. The idea of this is beggars believe, right? The problem with making them complicated is very often, it tells people like, it's like, we go back to a dog with pain, right? We go back to our dob of pain, someone is telling you, I need you to paint the Mona Lisa, and you've never painted before, you're scared to put the first piece of paint on, you won't, you'll just, you know, you'll have you'll kind of you'll have like a punk rock moment, and you'll toss the canvas and break it on the wall and walk out the room.   That's what everyone does. Everyone's just like, this is too hard. I'm not doing it. And so you stop people actually getting involved. So I am going again to run again, all of these systems are way too hard. The correct answer is save them money, one of those will be doing deep, it will be better than none of them and don't over stress it.   Personally, I probably go to have the tax deferred later. Because I want the money to compound my age, that's probably wrong. Because I'm you know, I'm probably begin taking the money out in 10-15 years, so might not compound that much. And I might be better off actually having more money now. And I suspect that's where the differential is. That's probably where, you know, that's where the delta is on that. But God, I mean, that's just way too hard. Sorry, not telling you off it. But it's way too hard a question to put to someone who probably has very minimal financial literacy, I could probably work out what the right answer is with a spreadsheet. That means it's a really bad policy to be offering people. Sorry to criticize your country.   Tom: I like it.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Okay, good.   Tom: My wife's a tax attorney and keeps keeps busy. Yeah, moving tax code.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Oh man. It's actually it's actually also one of the reasons why, you know, the financial literacy thing is so important, because you can't trust governments with this stuff. In the we all think that everything we experience from childhood has been around forever. The reality is, before the Second World War, most people were dying around 65 70, they did not get a pension because they didn't need it. They were literally going to last maybe four or five years after they after they finished work, they would expect to work to death. And only after the Second World War, do we get this mass input of pension schemes? And which is why in lots of countries, they're just paid out of government revenues. And I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. But it does. What it means is it's not necessarily going to be around forever. Tax codes aren't around forever. And it's one of the things that I worry too much about putting too much time into worrying about tax codes. Because by the time you take the money out, you'll have been through five different tax codes. It will all have changed so many times that if you try to think long range about tax, you're doing the wrong thing, because the risk on that is enormous.   Michael: That's such a good point. I think so many people hear about Taxco changing scramble to do whatever they can. And then next president next administration comes around things change scramble to do what we can and then you know, over and over and over again.   7 Dollar Millionaire: The people that make the money are Tom's wife. They make all the money!   Tom: She is just there, interpretating whatever, whatever comes out. Yeah,   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, exactly.   Tom: It's good for the Schneider family. It's good for them.   Michael: That's great. Well, I think we just got to wrap this up, Tom, any other questions for the 7 Dollar Millionaire?   Tom: No, I love it. I think of all of our podcast guests. I never have more like impactful like meaningful, like things that I go off and do after the episode. So I really appreciate you coming on super excited about the book coming out.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Yeah, thanks very much for that. It's, it's, um, I'm really excited about it, too. It was the publishers Wiley to appeal to published happy ever after. And they, they asked me when I kind of that they were actually publishing happily ever after they said, do you want to do a follow up? And I was like, No, no interest. The and it because I took that to mean that did they want me to write teaching my daughter how to invest properly, and not as a cop out? That's just too complex.   You know, the reason I write what I write is I'm interested in getting people off the ground up to being able to understand other books. I'm not interested in the other books, those are all great. They've already been done, you know?     And then, you know, while he was coaxing me and saying, Well, no, we have this book series called “The Little Book of“ Series, which like the Little Book of Common Sense investing is written by John Bogle. And I'm like, kidding, right? I get to write a book in series that that goes in. And actually the bigger one for me was actually The Little Book valuation is by Aswath Damodaran. Who, I don't know if you guys know him, but in my industry, he's a god.   Aswath Damodaran book bbout this thick on on, it's just got damodaran valuation. And it's got every way of valuing everything ever. And it's the Bible for my industry. Everyone's got a copy everyone's read it cover to cover. It's literally and it I mean, it's dense. He's I think he's a, he's a professor at NYU stern. And just like, super clever guy. So he wrote the little book of value valuation. And they're asking me 7 Dollar Millionaire if I want to write one of those. So I thought I've got to think about it. So just like so thinking about it. And I was like, still didn't want to write a follow up on investing. Now, I did literally woke up one morning, I was like, the little book of Zen Money. And just that the title just runs so nice. I was like, Yeah, okay, what, what can I do with that, and I was like, then the subtitle came to my head was like, okay, a simple path to financial peace of mind.   Okay. And literally, I'm writing the thing, first word to last word and like, not how you should write, you should break it up into bits. And Right, right, like the middle first, and then the end. And then the beginning. And I'm literally going from the title. And the last word, all right, will be the kind of the end. And just going that direction, because it just makes sense to me all the way through.   Tom: Yeah, it's there already. just pulling back.   Michael: Yeah, gotta get it onto paper.   7 Dollar Millionaire: I stay away from the other analogy. But the other analogy is chipping blocks off the stone, right to make a sculpture. That's what I'm doing with this one. It's there. It's already there. I've just got to find it. enough fun. Yeah, I wake up every morning and get at it part from today, when it's fun to talk to you guys instead.   Tom: Yeah, I mean, one of the takeaways also for these conversations is like, you know, this 80-20 principle where, you know, you get 80% of your value from 20% of the work and that last 20%, like, that's where it gets, like overly complicated moving targets, you know, anxiety, all that stuff, but just getting up and getting that initial blob of paint? I mean, I feel like I'm probably repeating a lot of the conversation, but it's a really powerful one.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Exactly. I mean, you know, it's it really is that that first move separates you from everyone who's not investing, who's not saving. That's it, right that if you were the stat or last year, it was ended. 2019. Right there, 61% of Americans didn't have $1,000 in an emergency fund.   Just having $1,000, that puts you already in the top 39% of the richest country in the world. That is already that that's the 80 20 rule right there. They're taking their money and opening an investing account, bang, you're probably in the top 10%. Right. And taking those actions is what moves you along these things all the time. That's why is is so important.   Yeah. It's the problem, as you said is, someone tells you, you should invest. Oh, and you should invest in this. So what you know, that's just way too complex. It should just be you should save, you should invest, and probably, you know, VTI just go there. He can be a while before you find anything else. So you can overcomplicate it later when you're ready to overcomplicate it, but to start with just go there.   Michael: Love it.   Tom: Love it. And VTi is the vanguard index fund. That's just kind of just blankets. The economy beautiful. Yeah, big fan.   7 Dollar Millionaire: It's, it's the it's the biggest economy in the world. It's the top 500 companies in the biggest economy in the world. You know, when we if you live off grid, you're not involved in the global economy. Fine, right. But that's like naught point naught naught 1% of us that's discussing this properly off grid. The rest of us are buying stuff to live our off grid life anyway, we're in the economy. That's that the most natural hedge just by that.   Michael: And the folks that do live off grid probably aren't gonna be listening to this podcast on their iPhone, in the middle of nowhere wherever they live off grid, so I don't think we have to worry about them.   7 Dollar Millionaire: They probably are.   Michael: Living off grid with faster Wi Fi than any of us.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Exactly.   Michael: Awesome. Well, $7 millionaire Always a pleasure to have you on thank you again for hanging out with us and bestowing some wisdom. And like I mentioned, and I mentioned very much looking forward to the book when it comes out. I know I'll be getting it. We will both be getting it I'm sure.   7 Dollar Millionaire: Excellent. Well, thank you very much. It really it's always a pleasure. Really good fun. Thanks, guys.   Michael: Awesome. Take care. I'll talk to you soon.   Alright, everybody, that was our episode a big big, big thank you to 7 Dollar Millionaire always such a pleasure chatting with him. Tom, I know you and I get so much value out of our talks with him and after all of our conversations, we have going making some changes to our own personal finance realm. So very excited to do that yet again. If you'd like the episode, please feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is just in your podcast. If you're checking this out on YouTube feel, feel free to hit that like and subscribe button. And as always, we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing.   Tom: Happy investing.

3D tisk, nebo rovnou aditivní výroba, zažívá poslední léta svou renesanci. 3D tisk byl ten, který šel do popředí, když bylo potřeba zastat roli vlády a hledat cesty k produkce respirátorů či ochranných štítů. Lze odhadovat, že 3D tisk bude také dále jedním s pilířů rozvoje konceptu Průmyslu 4.0. A za všemi těmito tématy se v průmyslu skrývá i jméno hosta, který přijal výzvu k návštěvě u mikrofonu. Tomáš Soóki přichází z firmy 3dWiser, a právě ta má s 3D tiskem ve spojení s průmyslem bohaté zkušenosti. 

Some of the highlights include:  Why Vodafone moved to a cloud native architecture. As Tom explains, the company was struggling to manage operations across more than 20 markets. They also needed to improve the customer experience, and foster customer loyalty.  Why their business and engineering teams were both in favor of cloud native. The benefits of deploying daily operational activities around a single cloud native platform.   An overview of where Vodavone currently is in their overall cloud native journey. Tom also explains how cloud native conversations have changed inside of the company throughout their journey, as various business units have caught on to the benefits of the cloud. Vodafaone's transition from outsourcing roughly 97 percent of their operations, to bringing 95 percent in house. Tom explains how this has improved efficiency and expedited time to market. The challenge that Vodafone faced in trying to apply legacy network security solutions to distributed and dynamic systems.  Tom's thoughts on why Vodafone's cloud native transition and modernization efforts have been crucial to their success over the last five years.  Links: Vodafone Group: https://www.vodafone.com/ Connect with Tom on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tom-kivlin-5b469321 The Business of Cloud Native: http://thebusinessofcloudnative.com  Tom's Twitter: https://twitter.com/tomkivlin CNCF GitHub: https://github.com/cncf CNCF Slack: https://slack.cncf.io/ Kubernetes Slack: http://slack.kubernetes.io/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native podcast, where we explore how end users talk and think about the transition to Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures.Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and today I am chatting with Tom Kivlin. Tom, thank you so much for joining us.Tom: You're welcome. No problem.Emily: Let's just start out with having you introduce yourself. What do you do? Where do you work, and what do you actually do during your workday?Tom: Sure. So, I'm a principal cloud orchestration architect at Vodafone Group. I work in the UK. And my day job consists of providing guidance and strategy and architectural blueprints for cloud-native platforms within Vodafone. So, that's around providing guidance to the software domains that are looking to adopt cloud-native architectures and methodologies and also to the more traditional infrastructure domains to try and help them provide their services in a more cloud-native manner to those modern teams.Emily: And what does that mean when you go into the office—or your home office, go into your dining room where your laptop is, I don't know—what do you actually do? What does an average day look like?Tom: It can vary. So, depending on the activity at the time, it could be anything from preparing a global policy that needs to go through the senior technology leadership team, to preparing some extremely detailed requirements for selection process or creating some infrastructures code, or the code artifacts for the deployment of cloud-native services, whether that's in our lab, or to help our services teams within Vodafone.Emily: Tell me a little bit more about what pain made Vodafone think about moving to cloud-native and Kubernetes.Tom: Primarily, it was the challenge of having 25 different markets, or 23 now. We launched a digital strategy to—so back in 2015, we launched a five-year strategy, which we wanted to massively increase the rollout of 4G, of converged network offerings, of improved customer experience. And we found that the traditional way of managing software was not supportive enough in our ambition. And so, having to choose cloud-native technologies, things like Kubernetes, but also the modern operating models, that was the driver: it was to improve our customer experience, and our customer-affecting KPIs, really.Emily: And when you say it wasn't supportive enough, what do you mean specifically?Tom: So, things like time to market, for example. So, if we wanted to offer a new service—so one of the things that 4G started the drive towards was a more granulated service offering to consumers, and so lots of different things could be offered. And if it took you six months to think of an idea and then have to go through—or even longer than six months to get to the point where that could be offered to customers, even if it was just a very minor feature within an existing product, then that's not going to engender customer loyalty. And so, things like the cloud-native mindset, where there's a much closer link between the engineering teams and the customer, there are much shorter periods of time between ideas coming in from the customers and then being delivered back to the customers as product features, that sort of time to market was really enabled by cloud-native technologies and mindsets.Emily: And how does having two dozen, more or less, different markets, how does that play into the decision A) to move to cloud-native in general, and managing the IT infrastructure?Tom: So, one of the things that's really driven it is trying to simplify and reuse artifacts. So, if you've got 23 markets all doing a different thing, then there's obviously a lot of duplication happening across the group, whereas if everyone's using the same technology in the same platforms—take Kubernetes as the example—everyone can write their software for that platform. Everyone can write their operational ecosystem around that platform. So, the deployment artifacts, the pipelines, the day two operational activities, they can all be based around that single cloud-native platform. And so, that enables a huge amount of efficiency from the operational side. And that in turn allows those engineering teams to focus on things that are adding value to the business and the customer instead of having to focus on fairly low-level tasks that are just keeping the lights on, if you like.Emily: What's different for each one of those markets?Tom: So, it might be something like language, it might be something as simple as that. It may be that the offerings are slightly tweaked. So, rather than, I don't know, as an example, rather than Spotify being included as a kind of add on, it might be some other service that's more relevant to that market. It may be that there are particular regulatory requirements that are specific to a market that needs to be considered within the product design and the engineering of it. And so, having a cloud-native response allows sharing and reuse of artifacts where we can, but still allows for that customization where it's required.Emily: Where would you say Vodafone is in the cloud-native journey? Do you feel like you've, mission accomplished?Tom: So, mission accomplished, as in the first step, yeah. So, we set out a goal in 2015, to get a certain number of our applications to the Cloud, and that's largely been reached, I think, especially with our customer channels, so that the kind of points of interaction with the customer, the huge number of those are cloud-native today. And things like automated customer interaction with chatbots, and the like, that's all added to the cloud-nativeness of the interaction. As part of our next iteration, we'll be looking for more cloud-native software and cloud-native platforms, and that will start extending into the network systems themselves, as well as the more digital and easily modernizable layers, if you like.Emily: What sort of business value do you feel like you're looking for as you move to the next step?Tom: So, primarily, it's going to be driven by customer satisfaction and customer affecting KPIs, like I said before. That's always what's driven the business metrics anyway. So, things like being able to support the demand of the customer. So, whether that's the new 5G services, for increased bandwidth. So, obviously, if our network systems themselves are cloud-native, then taking advantage of the auto-scaling, and the auto-healing, and the autonomic nature, then the customer experience, and the customer satisfaction will increase. Improving time to market, so again, part of 5G is that the whole notion of creating more differentiating services, and so if we can do that through the cloud-native mindset with product owners being much more closely engaged with customers, then that improves our product offerings. And we can optimize our network profitability by using cloud-native features like modern big data analytics, and even AI and automation to improve the operations of the network. At the end of the day, the business value is improved customer satisfaction, which improves our financial performance, obviously.Emily: And when you started out in 2015, who was pushing for moving to cloud-native? Was this the business saying, “Hey, how do we improve customer satisfaction?” Was it engineering saying, “Hey, here's an idea for something that could help us move faster?” Who was behind that?Tom: That's a good question. I think it's probably an element of both. It was the opposite of the push me, pull you, I guess. So, there was engineering pushing on an open door, I suppose you could say. So, Cloud was a bit of a buzzword around that time anyway, but I think it's fair to say the concepts of improved time to market, improved stability, the potential for improved security, improved automation, and repeatability, they were all relatively easy sells to product teams who want to be able to sell products to customers. And once you're able to explain what problems those concepts solve, I think it became a bit of a, like I say, pushing on an open door.Emily: Can you tell me a little bit about the process of explaining what problems these things solve? Was there anything that was getting lost in translation?Tom: Yeah. I think the biggest thing that I can recall—obviously, it's a company-wide thing. I'm never going to be aware of everything that happens—certainly, it's critical to try and understand what the target operating model is before trying to say, “Here's the technology solution to it.” So, I think some of the lessons that were learnt in the early stages were, rather than trying to say, “Here's the technology answer to a modern way of working that hasn't been agreed or adopted or even understood yet,” let's do that part first, so people understand how they need to work in this modern kind of culture. And then the technology answers then make a bit more sense to people because they're able to say, “Okay, I understand the problems that's solving now because I'm now working in that way of working.” So, that's probably the biggest learning point I would take from the previous five years.Emily: Do you feel like the conversation, how did it evolve from the first conversations over the course of the past five years, and then what's it like now?Tom: It's very different now. The concept of Cloud and cloud-native has become a given and very well understood across the business, even outside of technology. So, we talked to other business units, and they're quite comfortable in understanding the benefits of Cloud. And it's now about when they mature into cloud-native, and when they mature operating models, rather than if. And it's now talking and giving guidance about how to do it, rather than trying to sell the concept itself. So, it just feels like you're at that next stage of not having to sell the idea anymore, and more into the detail of how to implement that idea.Emily: What would you say were some of the biggest surprises? And let's start with thinking about some of the biggest surprises, not necessarily technically but organizationally, in how engineering was talking with the business, how people were working together. Was there anything about this journey that was unexpected?Tom: Not particularly. I think the biggest change that happened, which was possibly unexpected when we started, was the level of insourcing that we have undertaken to support the cloud-native operating models, the time to market, and the modern engineering teams. So, we used to be around 97 percent outsourced or something like that, in terms of building software that wasn't just vendor supplied. And for all that software now, we're more like 95 percent in-house. And so, that's quite a big change, and I think that probably surprised people that A) we needed to do it, and B) that we have done it, and relatively successfully got pretty wide-scale digital engineering functions across many markets now.Emily: And why do you think that matters?Tom: Because it gives us control of the roadmap, it gives us control of that time to market cadence, and it allows us to use the data that our teams understand and know about, and to share that with other markets. So, as I say, even though an engineering team might be in the UK, they can share what they've done, they can share the artifacts, they can share the data that's driven decisions and software activity with other markets within Vodafone. And that just improves that efficiency, again.Emily: Do you think insourcing also improves customer satisfaction KPIs?Tom: Certainly we've seen that. So, whether that's a correlation or causation is kind of for someone with more access to more data than I've got. But certainly, we've seen an increase in online sales, and our digital marketing is more data-driven. And that has happened in correlation with the in-sourcing of software engineering skillset, yeah.Emily: Do you have any specific examples that come to mind in, maybe you are able to react in a way that wouldn't have been possible if you'd been using the old system?Tom: I'm not aware of any specific examples, unfortunately.Emily: Was there anything about the move to Kubernetes, to cloud-native, that you expected to be difficult, and wasn't. So, that was easier than you expected?Tom: That's a good question. I suspect the provision of multiple clusters. Kubernetes is difficult. It's a complex system, hence why there are so many cluster management vendor offerings available. And I think we chose a couple of partners early on in the journey to help us with that, and I think that really helped, and it made Kubernetes a little less scary for the software teams who were using it. So certainly, I've heard feedback—this is anecdotal, rather than anything that's evidence-driven—actually, just being able to create clusters and deploy into them was easier than people had thought when they were learning about Kubernetes through the quick start tutorials and the like.Emily: Was there anything that sticks out as being far more difficult than expected? The more unpleasant surprises?Tom: I wouldn't necessarily call them unpleasant, but obviously there's going to be a transition period—which we're in—between the traditional data-center-centric networking and network security policies and concepts, and those that work with Cloud and cloud-native platforms like Kubernetes. And there have definitely been challenges in trying to apply the legacy approach to network security with a distributed and dynamic system like Kubernetes, where you can't give everything a static IP address or even have separate subnets within a cluster for segregation, for example. It has to be done in a different way. You can still apply the same controls, they just have to be done in a different way. So, I think that's one of a few challenges that we found that we've had to work through with different vendors, with engineering teams, and with our internal teams to try and update our guidance on how to apply those controls.Emily: And to what extent have there been organizational challenges, and how have you gotten over those?Tom: That's a tricky one to answer, really. I think it all comes down to the balance between understanding and buying into a strategy, but then applying that to application lifecycle and investment lifecycles. So, I think this is probably true for any company: just because a strategy says this is the thing to do, you got a roadmap for your portfolio of applications and services that you need to balance a limited budget. And so, that's been the biggest challenge, is to try and identify how much of each budget at various levels can be spent on strategic activity, and then for which services, and trying to keep that balance, and bearing in mind that there are lots of different things pulling on that same pot of money.Emily: And what have you learned about managing that?Tom: I think primarily that there needs to be a holistic view of strategic projects. It's quite difficult to put the onus on a local budget, to spend the money to do something strategic when the benefits are probably—and the business case is probably seen more widely than the individual budget area. But I think it differs between situations, and between markets, and what's happening. I think the primary thing is to understand the costs of the strategy upfront, and try and work those costs into whatever needs doing over the period.Emily: A slightly different question, which is, is there anything you feel like in the cloud-native journey that you're still working on solving, that you haven't really figured out yet?Tom: I'm not sure whether we haven't figured this out yet, but one of the things we're putting a lot of effort in at the moment, is the use of advanced data and analytics platforms to try and drive even more network automation, and network planning efficiencies. So, I think it was last year at Google Next, we announced a partnership with Google to make use of their data services. And there's a few projects ongoing within Vodafone to try and drive the amount of knowledge and useful information we can gather from the vast quantities of data we have about our services and the customers that use them because the more we can use that data, the more we can respond to customer need in a timely manner, whether that's reactively in terms of operational response or whether that's proactively in seeing trends that we can then meet a need that may be unsaid yet.Emily: And if you were to talk to another engineering leader who was trying to push through the open door as you were saying, what advice would you give them?Tom: The biggest bit of advice is to understand the current way of working for whichever area you're—is on the other side of the door, and understand their pain points because it's not always the same answer. So, generalizing, it may be that one area is more than happy to have a centralized global platform offering, whether that's within our data centers, or public cloud, or both. Another area, just the way it's managed, may require a more distributed model, where the services are offered on a more market specific level. And so, I think that that's the main thing, is to understand the specifics of that area that you're talking to because it will affect how you want to architect and onwardly deploy and manage that technology.Emily: It would affect not just how you want to architect the technology, but also how you want to communicate what your plan is, right?Tom: Absolutely. Yeah. So, in the first of the examples I gave, where an area might be happy with a centralized service, that probably means they're already using one. The way you would communicate that would be via that existing channel, if you like. Whereas on the flip side, that kind of channel may not exist, and therefore running the project or projects and communicating with stakeholders would be much more distributed.Emily: At Vodafone was there ever any challenge selling it, not just over to the business side, but also selling internally inside engineering teams? Or was everyone pretty gung ho to do this?Tom: No, there's always challenges. I think again, it goes back to understanding the pain points of an area and understanding why things are the kind of as they are today, which I guess is general for things outside of technology and outside of Vodafone generally is. If you understand the position of the person you're debating with, then you're more likely to reach a common understanding than if you go into it with your own point of view and being unwilling to listen. So, I think that's the main thing is just being willing to listen, to understand pain points, and to be able to react to those within a strategy. You'd hope that it's flexible enough to be able to meet a wide range of needs without needing to necessarily change the overall vision.Emily: How important do you think this cloud-native transition has been for Vodafone?Tom: I think it's been crucial. I think we couldn't have done what we've done in the last five years without it. So, there's a video that our group CTO has posted on LinkedIn recently which highlighted a few things around improved mobile KPIs, we've got 4G in 21 markets, we've got the largest 5G in Europe, and all of those improvements from time to market I've already mentioned, we simply couldn't have done that without a modernization program to move to cloud-native across a number of our systems. So, yes, that's partly a technology thing, but also, it is such a cultural thing, and having that modern way of working where you have your modern engineering teams who are closer to the customer, but they're also—the different mindset of a modern engineering company where you're not afraid to try new things, and if you fail, you learn from them. And I think that's all part of what I would class as cloud-native, and that has been, like I say, it's been crucial for us to be able to get where we have been.Emily: It's interesting to think cloud-native means if you fail, you learn from it. That's a fairly basic concept, and yet true. I can see how that is, sort of, part of being cloud-native.Tom: Yeah, it's one of those things is quite a basic thing, but I think in traditional ways of working, the focus on the availability of systems and the performance of systems can blind everyone to the possibilities outside of that particular area of focus. And it puts pressure on people at all levels to try and minimize periods of downtime or periods of low performance. And over time, people become less and less willing to be able to try new things, through fear of failing because just the way people work it's difficult to learn from those failings because it affects customers. And so, what cloud-native technologies enable because of the way things are orchestrated—things are dynamic, things are repeatable—it's very easy to try new things, and not affect all customers. Now, obviously, good software engineering practices help as well. But I think the cloud-native technologies and the ways of working really do support the whole “learn by failing” premise.Emily: Do you think it would have been possible to get the customer satisfaction KPIs that you did, without moving to cloud-native, in any other way?Tom: I think the only way you could have done is by a huge investment in people and the traditional technologies. It would have been a much more expensive and slower journey, in my opinion.Emily: Anything else that you want to add about your experience moving to cloud-native?Tom: No, I don't think so. I think one of the things—like I said before, the increase in automation, the increase in the modern technologies is just really helped with those customer affecting KPIs, and that has to be the drive for why you're doing it.Emily: All right, just a couple more questions, then. What is your can't-live-without engineering tool?Tom: Oh, that's a good question. Probably Python. I think so many people use it either as a cross-platform scripting tool to be able to automate things and get on the first step towards cloud-native, or it's such a key part of many cloud-native tools like things like Ansible and other tools, and it's used hugely within our data analytics domain to try and drive the usefulness of the data. So, yeah, that's probably the one I'd choose.Emily: And then this actually is the last question which is, how can listeners follow you or connect with you?Tom: So, I'm on Twitter at @tomkivlin. I'm also on LinkedIn. So, I'm Tom Kivlin, working for Vodafone Group. I am a member of the telecom user group within the CNCF. So, you can find them on GitHub and also in the… I think it's the CNCF or the Kubernetes Slack. And yeah, happy to share experiences and keep learning.Emily: Well, thank you so much. Again, this is Tom Kivlin, and we'll go ahead and wrap it up there. Thank you so much, Tom.Announcer: Thank you for listening to The Business of Cloud Native podcast. Keep up with the latest on the podcast at thebusinessofcloudnative.com and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. We'll see you next time.This has been HumblePod production. Stay humble.

In this episode, we have Katrina Phillips from Investor HOA Services on to explain everything investors should know about investing in properties that are a part of HOAs.  --- Transcript   Tom: Greetings and welcome to The Remote Real Estate Investor. On today's episode, we have one of the most knowledgeable persons I know on HOA. We have Katrina Phillips, who's the founder and CEO of investor HOA services. So are you, you are interested in investing in a property that is in an HOA. This is a great episode to listen to. All right, let's do it.   Theme Song   Tom: Hey, Katrina. Thank you so much for jumping on with us.   Katrina: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me today. It's my favorite topic to discuss.   Tom: Perfect. Well, why don't we go ahead and start, give us a little bit of a background about yourself.   Katrina: So I started in the single family industry back in 2012. Prior to that, I was actually a contractor and had several properties that we bought refurbished and sold. And so I spent about 20 years in construction learning it from every aspect so that I can learn it from. And then I started working with American residential property and really develop their operating platform or was their first hire on their operations team. And people really hadn't done this in the past. The first multifamily, we were able to pull things from, but really we were writing the policies and procedures, the books and utilities and HOA were two things that people hadn't really thought about. It wasn't even a line item on people's profit and loss that they were considering in their, you know, when evaluating investments. And so we really began to build that piece of the process. How does that work? How does, you know, the fact that we own 70% of our properties are in an HOA? How do we interact with them and how does that work? So that's how I kind of got into this side of the business.   Tom: Awesome. It's funny to think about 2012 and I was there too. It was the wild West where, you know, a lot of these companies such as yours and the ones that I was working at was raising a ton of money, buying these houses. And it's just kind of learning as we go and, you know, HOA and utilities, you know, came to be pretty important, parts of the details in doing this at scale.   Katrina: It did. And it was so much fun. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. And, uh, you know, we learned a lot and grew it, and here we are today.   Tom: That's awesome. And you have since gone on to start a new company, right? Why don't you tell us a little bit about your company that you are running right now?   Katrina: So I was actually sitting in a meeting and, um, we were working with a utility provider that function very similarly to what we have structured as well. We actually asked them the question of if they'd like to take on HOA as, you know, as part of their process and has it was becoming a really growing concern and issue and having some pretty significant impact on the bottom line for companies. So they said, absolutely not that they wanted to stick with what they specialize in and that really planted that seed for me. And so that's where investor HOA services came into play, where, you know, we took a singular focus to build an operations platform around that that also integrates pretty seamlessly with other companies, systems and process. I knew I couldn't go in and say, throw away what you're working on right now and use what I'm saying to use. I also knew that we had to get it so that people could kind of go to one place to access information and things that they needed to manage the property. And so that's what we began developing back in 2017 is really an operations platform that can be used in several other areas. We just chose to focus on HOA because we could see it with a growing concern, making bigger and bigger impacts to the bottom line of companies. So we focused in there first, so that is investor HOA services.   Tom: That's awesome. So to sort of paraphrase investor HOA services is a provider for investors to manage basically all things related to the hos for the properties that are located at those hos. Is that right? Is that a good summary?   Katrina: That's correct. So everything related in the full life cycle of compliance, which could be a city code, HOA, rental, registration, municipal permitting, and all of those kinds of things on the compliance side of property management.   Tom: Very cool. Very cool. Awesome. Well, let's go ahead and dig into some of the meat of this learning a little bit more about H ways and how they relate to investors who are evaluating. So why don't we take a step back and why don't you define what is an HOA and, you know, high level, what are they   Katrina: So HOAs can be actually kind of several different things. And of course there's no consistency across the country of what an HOA physically is, but in general, in HOA is a nonprofit company that manages common areas, common elements within the community amenities. And there's also of course, condo owner associations, there's civic associations that are often voluntary membership, and we're starting to see more and more different types of HOAs, such as a borough and a neighborhood developments. Of course, in Florida, you actually see a lot of community development districts. There's some really fun, fancy development districts in Florida that have waterslides and water parks and all kinds of fun things in those. And so to be a member or participate and utilize those amenities items, then you pay your assessments fee on an, you know, either quarterly or annual or semiannual basis. And the HOA then kind of takes care of all those common area elements.   Tom: Got it. And that's interesting about some of the, those new amenities that are poking up around water slides. I mean, he made it sound it optional at all to join the HOA, or is it like, you know, since your property's located there, or is it kind of built into the deed that you have to join the HOA? I'm curious about that.   Katrina: Yeah. Civic associations are voluntary. Often they'll have a community pool or something that is shared amenity there or a park or something along those lines. We'll see a lot of lakes and that kind of thing within a civic. So that's voluntary. You also have something called a club membership, which will be, you can pay for different levels of membership within that. So for example, most often they include a golf course. You know, they might include a workout facility that's extra above and beyond what a standard membership would be. And so those are voluntary in regards to what the levels are that you can buy into. But in general, yes, if you're in an HOA, just kind of a standard HOA, then you are required to participate in their program.   Michael: And it sounds like there's kind of numerous different styles of HOA. I know for me, when I hear HOA, I just automatically think of condo association, but what you're telling us is that they could apply to single family homes, town homes, you know, planned communities. Is that fair to say,   Katrina: Yes, they can be commercials, commercial spaces. There's just all kinds of different options out there.   Michael: Interesting. Got it.   Katrina: There's probably about 10 that are standard that we see standard across the board. And then in different parts of the country, you see kind of different nuances within that. Like I said, you'll see boroughs, of course, in New York and New Jersey, that's a little, you know, structured similarly to a civic or community development, but they all have a little bit of different nuances to them.   Michael: Okay. Interesting. And you touched on amenities a little bit, and I was curious if there is such a thing as kind of a common or a standard set of amenities that you get as being part of an HOA, or do they vary as drastic as the style of HOA that there could even be out there?   Katrina: They vary very drastically. So we have especially see this a lot in Georgia where maybe it was built in the eighties, especially, well, pretty much any community built within the 1970s and eighties when HOAs first kind of started coming on the scene, they are just more of a planned community. So you'll see the coldest actual see similarities in regards to finishes on the exterior and, you know, mailbox requirements and that kind of thing. And then it's kind of more where it evolves as time went on. And that's where you kind of see some standardization on what I guess they were into in that moment. So then you hit into the two thousands and, and then now into the late two or 2020 range, and you're seeing these, you know, fun things like that are going on in Florida. So really it varies pretty tremendously. And that's a big part of what we do is we look at okay, what amenities are available, where that assessment money going to, and what's the benefit you're receiving from that.   Tom: That's interesting. I never thought about it that way about, you know, the vintage of the property. Like what was the fad for developments in the way that they structure these communities? So depending on what year you bought it, it is kind of a different flavor of the way that they were structuring. Super interesting. So I got a question. So if you put your investor goggles on and just think this is very high level about evaluating a property with an HOA, what would you say generally speaking, like what are the good things about buying a rental property that's in an HOA and what would be some of the detractors of buying a property in investment property? That's at an HOA. So we'll start with the positive.   Katrina: Yeah, let's start with the positive. So one of the things we learned and identified very early on is here, we are an investment firm and we're based out of Scottsdale Arizona. And our house is in Georgia and the HOA begins to function as kind of your eyes and ears and helping you monitor and keep an eye on that property. So I think as an investor, that's a huge value to you. You don't have to actually have people on the ground, you know, checking that property, the HOA is doing that for you. So I think that's probably the biggest positive as well as from a leasing perspective, of course, you know, you're leasing a property that has most likely some upgraded amenities and features that are desirable to people leasing. So, you know, it assist with that, it making it a home to that person occupying that property, not just a rental, they feel like they're part of a community and part of a home on the flip side of that, that can actually, that community sense is something that the HOA have expressed that they're concerned about when institutional investors come into their community, will there be that loss of sense of community because it's a renter there and they're not going to actually participate in the HOA itself. So that can be a con I think one of the other issues that has occurred over the last several years and kind of my number one thing that I focus on is rebuilding communication bridges, because what happened was when institutional investors came into communities, the HOA did it kind of feared that and was a little concerned that the property values would degrade and there would be issues. So one of the things that has been, I guess, a missed out by the industry is that they didn't work to keep those communications open with the HOA and the HOA began to grow very frustrated. So what they've done out of their frustration is began to really Institute some rental restrictions to either prohibit institutional investment in that community, or really eliminate it and control it. So that's been kind of the, the other side of it that's evolved since 2012, when we first got into the industry, they were happy and they were excited about us coming into the communities. We were remodeling the property and making things better. And then that slowly started to shift in 2013 and 14, where they began to grow skeptical. So there's been a lot of work to alleviate that situation, but there's still some work to do there. So that's kind of the flip side of it, where the HOA is, are frustrated and they're kind of lashing out in these different ways to really essentially get some people's attention and get things cured. And together,   Michael: You touched on it a little bit ago, Katrina, but I wanted to circle back to it for my own edification. We said that HOA is our nonprofit businesses, who is the HOA when we talk about HOAs.   Katrina: So the HOA for the most part is a voluntary board of directors of owners within that community. So I we're seeing fewer and fewer of those, maybe it's because most HOA has gone out and decided to have a management company come in, such as associate or for service residential and come in and manage that. So the HOA is just meant to collect dues, cover the expenses of maintaining those common elements. And then that's pretty much it, that's all their job that's there. And then of course, to ensure that people adhere to the CC&Rs for that community and, you know, don't let their grass get to leave their garbage cans out, all that fun stuff.   Michael : Okay. And so when you talk about the HOA members or board being frustrated with institutional investors coming in and looking to crack down on that a little bit, that's just a group of owners in that specific community that are feeling that way and expressing those frustrations?   Katrina: Correct.   Michael: Got it.   Tom: Gosh, I love your point about, on the good side of thinking of as another eyes and ears. I think a lot of times, you know, we ask these questions, I kind of have an idea of which direction, you know, we're going to get a response, but I never thought about that way of thinking of the HOA as, as kind of part of your team love that. So you touched into a great transition point CC&Rs and, you know, making owners out here, what are some of the recourse that the HOA companies have and with owners that are not adhering, and I'd love for you to get into that and CC&Rs and rules around that.   Michael: And Katrina for those of our listeners that might not be aware, familiar, what does CC&R stand for?   Katrina: Covenants codes and restrictions? So it of course varies by state. Each state has some extra nuances. You know, Florida has some really interesting ones, New York, New Jersey as well. So the CCNR are put into place and in those CC and RS, it's really spelled out what the recourse is. We have some, we've had some interesting updates over the last several years in regards to what the HOA can charge you because previous to this, and it kind of started in an Arizona, which is where most HOA has, you know, kind of evolved from. But the previous to this legislation that came through the HOA, kind of do whatever they wanted in regards to getting your attention and having you pay fee. So we're seeing over the last five years or so where they're really standardizing that across the country, which is wonderful. We like standardization. And so they're making it so that they have to go through a very specific process to notify you of that violation, give you a period of time to cure. If you don't cure, then it goes to the next step. And so usually it's a courtesy warning, one, two, and three, then by warning three are incurring a fine, and those generally start at $25. But in a lot of States, we also have, what's called a stair set process, which is another thing that investors, there's a way to work around this or work with the HOA to do what we call the clean slate program. So the HOA in some States, the fines violations and assessment costs falls the property, not the owner. So you have a new tenant move into that property. And the prior tenant kept violating with trash cans being sent out. And that violation was then go into a monitor status from anywhere from six months to one year. And if they re-violate within that timeframe, it, it goes right back to where it left off.  So if you were at already at $75 in fines, it'll go to a hundred or it'll go to a hearing. So that's something that investors aren't aware of, but you can work with the HOA to, again, wipe that slate. Clean, say, we've had a new occupant in it. We're a new owner. We're going to do things differently now. And we promise you that we won't have those violations incurred. So like I said, it's been really interesting to see over the last several years where they've kind of standardized that with the HOA is, can do kinda maintaining some control. And that has to be documented in their CC and RS, what their fee schedules are now, which really helps you kind of plan for that and be prepared for what's going to come your way.   Tom: So what are the more common? So talking about, you know, people, you mentioned putting trash cans out, what are the other kinds of issues where people incur fines from HOA, those would be all in those CC&Rs and what are the common issues that you think most investors deal with or violate?   Katrina: So the number one thing, and we track this, we look at it, we break down and give a lot of granularity to the types of violations that are coming in. And number one on the list is always landscaping and specifically weeds, especially in April and October, when they're doing those inspections on that, and you can get almost weekly fines for that or notices of fine. So landscaping is number one, and I would say two is two and three are usually pretty close and it's trash cans and parking violation. So we have a lot of residents to try to park on the lawn, try to park, you know, on the street when street parking is not allowed.   Michael: I own a property in an HOA and I get nasty grams all the time. Trash cans are still out. It's been a week. I don't think God, God, God, I got to get ahold of the tenants and pass the message along.   Tom: Did you say nasty, nasty grams? Is that the nastygram?   Michael: Exactly, but a letter informing me of a violation, I call the nastygrams.   Tom: So how about when you do have some issue, can you guys push that to the tenants that are living at the property, if they're violating these rules? Like, are there any laws or registrations like around that? Like if they violate an HOA rule, should it be the tenant that has to pay it or fix it, or I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.   Katrina: Yes, indeed. So what we call that the tenant charge back process. So we actually have a whole workflow that goes through, we've received a courtesy notice. It gets sent to the tenant. The tenant actually, um, for most of our clients has about seven business days to return photos to us and make sure it's care. We're trying to really alleviate that even courtesy notice from going any further than that is we're trying to alleviate aggravation that the HOA is feeling about institutional investors. So we really work on the front end, as well as tenant education to let them know you live in a HOA, here's the rules and regulations that you need to be aware of. And most of the hos are now taking their several hundred page CC&R document and really narrowing it down to the top things to be aware of. So we make sure that that is available at the fingertips of the leasing team so that they can educate the tenant.  We find we have a much better experience with them. And so that all gets documented so that we can see very clearly, okay, is this an HOA issue or a resonant issue? The resident keeps leaving their trash can out every week. And now it's a thousand dollars in fines because they've been incurring daily fines, which always just makes me cringe because a thousand dollars just for leaving your trash can out, we see it all the time, but it's unfortunate to say the least. So there is a whole system and process where we educate the tenant. We notify the tenant every time we receive documentation and really keep them in the loop and engaged and involved with being part of that solution there versus, you know, ongoing continual issues. And then we also work with the leasing team so that they're aware of, Hey, I think you may need to have a conversation with us, this occupant here and see if you can alleviate that. And then the third piece of that is of course, communication directly with the HOA is to let them know we have informed the resonant. We have received these photos. Do you consider this violation cured and closed? That's then the issue that I've spoken to, a lot of, of the SFR groups out there where they have that $8,000 mailbox, because they sent out a contractor to fix the mailbox post, but they didn't fix it according to what the HOA was looking for. So we make sure we really communicate with the HOA and let them know what the care was and how it was fixed and make sure that they're good to go with that. And then if they, if there is a fine, we establish with our clients a list of what will be a charge back versus not. So for example, a trainees trend and it's above seven feet where it needs to trend. Most of our clients don't want their residents getting on a ladder. So they'll not charge that back. But if they do, if it's under the seven foot mark, then, and there is a fine incurred, then that gets put onto the tenant ledger to hold them accountable for that.   Tom: Got it. Jump just the other kind of aspect of the CC&Rs and the rules, not necessarily fines, but you know, percentage of the units that can be rented. So there's some other really important aspects of those rules that an investor would need to know that's in those CC&R. Do you mind touching on some of those,   Katrina: Right. So we complete a review of all CC and RS that come into us and we're looking for a rental or leasing restrictions. We're also looking for sign restrictions. And other thing that people don't often think about is that certain hos don't allow you to put a sign for lease sign in the front yard, or they don't allow, you know, you can put it in the window, but you can't put it anywhere else, or it has to be a certain size. So we'll look through that, the CCNRs to identify any of those kinds of issues. And then the rental restrictions kind of break down into three categories, either have category one where they just do not allow leasing in their community. And we will recommend that you dispose that property or they'll have the second category. Is there some kind of restrictions where they require a background check and approval of your resident before they move in, or there's a cap in place of 10%?  Usually there are things that you can work through on those rental caps, they're called hardship letters. And you can put in a hardship letter to that HOA requesting them to review and make an exception to that 10% cap. And then there's also in that category where you can't lease the property for anywhere from 12 to 24 months, it has to be owner occupied. So we then document that information in our systems so that you can see the breakout of that. And then they use third category is they just want a copy of the lease and to know who's renting the properties basically. So those documents are captured and sent over to the HOA,   Michael: Shifting gears here a little bit Katrina, I want to talk about HOA fees because you mentioned at the beginning that are nonprofit bodies or organizations. If you will. I feel like me personally, sometimes that they might be for profit, but so what are the fees usually go towards paying?   Katrina: So the piece should be going towards paying for those common area. Upkeep. There should be a capital reserve account noted on their budget. They should be issuing the budget to you on an annual basis and it should be reviewed and make sure that there, the other concern that I know a lot of investors have expressed is we keep paying these assessments, but the money is not going to what we've been paying into. And the HOA is virtually insolvent. So they're carrying a negative balance. They have some sort of debt again and against the HOA something's going on in their financial stability is in question. So that is what the money is supposed to be going to. And as well as management of that HOA collecting the assessment funds, paying for an inspector to go on and stacks for fines and violations and those kinds of things, that's where the budget should be going. And like I said, they should have a healthy capital reserve accounts to complete any upgrades that are needed to that age away.   Michael: Okay. And so you bring up a great point about upgrades. Would upgrades be a reason for an HOA fee increasing from year to year?   Tom: Yeah. Do they change? Yeah. I'd be interested to hear your feedback.   Katrina: They do. And you know, 2020 has been interesting for several different reasons. But one thing we're seeing from the actual AEs is a lot of special assessments that are hitting people's accounts. And I have to say, this is the first year I've seen where so many are being instituted and put into place. And so there's actually two levels to that where they don't even have to have a board meeting to vote in a special assessment, depending on what the cap is of that, that amount. So that it could literally just show up on your doorstep one day that you have a $20,000 assessment do so generally speaking in a normal year, we'll see about anywhere from a three to 5% increase of assessments year over year. So several years ago when we started the company in 2017, we've actually seen quite a bit of increases over the last three years.  And I think that's HOA is trying to make up for some of the depositions and things that they have in their capital reserve accounts. So what we're normally would see would be a three to 5% increase, but since 2017, we've seen average across the country of assessment dues go from three 30 to 440. So it's quite a good jump, healthy jump over the last few years, but know normal would be three to 5% where, you know, just cost of things have gone up. So cost of their power bills for the common areas. And those kinds of things have gotten a little bit more expensive. So, you know, on average, I would say anywhere from a $5 increase to about $25 would be pretty normal. Anything above that, then I'm starting to look at the budget and kind of see where that money is going. What's going on.   Michael: And you mentioned special assessment. Can you talk a little bit about that? What that is?   Katrina: So it's more common of course, in the condo world and the townhome world. Uh, but a lot of our SFR investors have condos and town halls and things like that. So that would be to replace a roof on ability repaint the exterior in a standard single family development. It would be to put a new roof on the clubhouse, replaster the pool, those kinds of things, where they should be putting aside a capital reserve fund. But what we've seen is, you know, with the change in the economy in 2008, 2009, I think a lot of hos did, you know, ended up dipping into that reserve fund to keep going and keep solvent. And so now they're kind of trying to make up for that. And so we're just seeing a lot more this year than we have in the past. It could also be to do with the average age. And most of our clients' portfolios are just kind of hitting that Mark where they're starting to need some major items completed.   Michael: Okay. And is there a good ballpark or kind of range or estimate you would anticipate based on size or age of an association or community for how much reserve they should have? The reason I asked the question is I live my primary. Isn't an HOA. I have a condo and there was, I got, there was a study done that showed the financial stability of the association and it showed that they were way under-funded, but they had several hundred thousand in cash in reserve. And so I said, well, that seems like a lot, but I have no idea how much they should be. This, this company thought they were underfunded, but I feel like they're adequately funded. Is there a good ballpark or general rule for that?   Katrina: No, because there's just so many factors that go into place there, you know, have they managed their funds over the last several years? I would say that HOA is probably managing pretty well with a couple of hundred thousand in there. I've literally seen some with nothing in their capital reserve budget. So I think as our housing inventory ages, uh, you know, it is just becoming more and more of an issue, but yeah, I don't think there's a standard number you guys can count on to tell your investors that, you know, set aside this much because you may, you know, have this come up at some point. It really varies wildly.   Tom: If you're buying properties within an HOA, is there a way for you to get on the HOA, like a seat or, you know, if you get enough properties or I don't know, I'd be curious to hear your experience. If you can't beat them join, that's not the right way to say it. If yoou can't beat em, join em, but like basically getting on the inside, I would imagine like having multiple customers, like it's probably pretty big sway potentially within certain hos.   Katrina: Yes, definitely. Especially with institutional investors, you could potentially own 30% or more of a community. So some have instituted in their CCNRs where even if you own several properties, you're still only get one vote, um, board items, but for the most part, yes, it definitely can help sway those voting items. I actually, one of the questions you guys had further down here was have I been on a board and, or joined a board of the company that I worked with previously? And yes, I was on a board in North Carolina and attended several board meetings. What we had done was we were doing a build to rent a pilot projects at the time. And so we were going in and doing infill in a community that was already established a really nice HOA. We did the same thing in Georgia as well. And we actually attended several of the board meetings just to say, this is who we are, what we're about.  These are our goals as a company and what our know kind of core values as a company are. We're not just a nameless faceless corporation where, you know, people that really care about your community. And so it actually really, really helped. It was very, you know, contentious at first, they weren't really excited about us being there, but we were able to really turn that around and then, you know, create a really good relationship with that HOA in the longterm. So there is definitely benefits if they can get some notes, your company and the people at your company, you know, they don't sign you or, you know, put violations on unless you've broken the rules. But I feel that it goes a long ways to kind of alleviate how often they're going to, you know, hit you with those kinds of things, if they know who you are. And, and then instead of doing a formal final email you directly before they even document that, so you can go in and get it taken care of and never even hit your account. So that was a lot of fun, but it had some pretty tremendous impact. And then we've been a member of a few different boards throughout the country and, you know, same kind of thing where you identify an HOA that seems to be a, maybe elevated in their feelings about your company and whatnot. And you want to, you know, stay in that community and not sell out of it and continue to lease your properties there. I think it's always a great idea to participate in board meetings and discussions with the HOA, because again, remember their biggest issue and concern was that they would lose the sense of community than an HOA brains because it's, you know, it's a corporation coming in and investing in here. So if you can kind of guide them to a different philosophy on that, it has a pretty tremendous impact. Yeah.   Michael: That makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. Katrina, can you talk to us a little bit about the value that you've seen in your experience from a rental perspective and then maybe from a sale perspective as well that a well run HOA can bring to an investor? Of course the poorly run ones might harm the value, but as far as rentability and resell value for an HOA property, how have you seen that impact things?   Katrina: It's definitely positive on both ends of it, right? Because you've got the tenant who now has access to a pool and other things that, you know, if they were to purchase a home, they maybe wouldn't have access to those same things. So by renting, they have that added benefit. And on the South side, you know, I haven't seen data on exact numbers of, you know, increases the value by say $5,000 because of course, then you're paying dues and stuff in there. And I haven't seen any data pull to see how it impacts the sale, but, you know, I definitely know, well run H ways you'll see them move a lot faster. We'll sell that home much faster. People are clamoring to get into that community and be a part of it. So, you know, especially like those really fun ones in Florida, you know, they almost have a wait list of people trying to purchase homes in there cause they want to be there.   Michael: The water park in the backyard makes sense.   Katrina: Yeah. I mean, how great is that? So, you know, it definitely impacts leasing, you know, several years ago, stock saw statistics that it definitely on average knocks several days off of the lease up timeframe. So it does seem to help.   Michael: Interesting. Okay, great.   Tom: Awesome. My last question I have right now, and this is, I guess, sort of an aggregation, probably of some of the topics that we've talked about, but just at a high level, if you're talking to a newish investor, who's thinking about buying a property, that's in an NHOA, what advice would you give them on how to go about evaluating and owning a property in an HOA?   Katrina: I think they should definitely, and most people don't do this. I think one thing they should look at is is it, if this HOA is financially solvent and how is it being run because you're right. If that HOA is not being run well, it will certainly have an impact on your resident experience in that home. The very quickly start to feel like, you know, they're being picked on and you know, that's not the resident experience that any of us want. So, you know, as an investor looking at an HOA, I would definitely take a look at that. What does this HOA look like? Are they keeping up with things, are the common elements and go to order in good shape? Are they easily accessible? You know, is it kind of making sense? What if they're charging $300 a year? Can I see where that money is going essentially? So I think visually kind of inspecting the community would be really helpful. And, you know, in evaluating that decision to lease there or not,   Tom: How would one get the financials related to an HOA?   Katrina: So in when they're purchasing home, they should be asking for an estoppel. And in that estoppel gives you your statements, your CC&Rs, and ours, all of your documents that you would need. And I think also, like I said, I've spoken about tenant education before, but it's so critical again to the whole kind of overall experience and whether or not you're going to keep that tenant in that home longterm. And of course that's a goal for most SFRs is really going to keep them in the house, you know, two, three, five years. And so, you know, by obtaining that estoppel, now that becomes challenging when you're purchasing via auction or other avenues. But if you're purchasing through MLS and through I'm sure groups like yours, where you can have some of that documentation in place, then I would encourage everybody to go in and take a look at that because it definitely will have an impact to kind of the longterm viability of that investment.   Tom: Great communication. Well, thank you so much for coming on. This has been super interesting, you know, hos there's so much value in having that kind of preset neighborhood look and feel that is desirable and a good standardization. And I love the feedback about getting to know the HOA and partnering with them on your team has been super helpful. And I want to thank you for coming on.   Katrina: Yes, I've really enjoyed it. Thank you guys.   Tom: Awesome.   Michael: All right, thanks. Have a great one.   Tom: Thank you to Katrina Phillips for today's episode, super knowledgeable. It got a lot out of that. If you liked today's episode, please subscribe to us on your podcast. Send us a note. My email is tom@roofstock.com. I love to talk investing. I love to talk podcast content. I love to talk investing education hit me up. This episode was brought to you by Roofstock Academy. Roofstock Academy is a holistic program with one on one, coaching group coaching, over 50 hours of on-demand lectures covering getting started to scaling up. A special bonus Roofstock Academy is now giving $2,500 towards Roofstock marketplace credits. That's right. You can pay $1,250 for $2,500 of marketplace credits. All right. Happy investing.   Theme song

In this episode, Micheal, Tom and Emil take on some common worries that friends and family have when you tell them that you are considering taking up remote real estate investing and provide solid arguments for reasoned responses.  --- Transcript   Michael: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of their motor real estate investor. I'm Michael album, and today as usual, I'm joined by Tom Schneider and Emil Shour. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about kind of an interesting topic. Do those around you, not support your remote real estate investing dreams. We're going to be giving everyone today some tips, tricks, and fodder about how to speak intelligently about remote real estate investing. So let's jump into it.   Theme Song   Michael: Alright guys, before we get into this episode, I just wanted to check in with you all, how are you guys doing? There's some new quarantine issues that just came out from the governor and wanted to check in how you guys are doing.   Emil: Welp. Can't go surfing this weekend because LA beaches are locked down.   Michael: Oh no!   Emil: So that's unfortunate, but I got out there this morning in anticipation of not being able to,   Michael: How was it ?   Emil: It was crowded a little bit slow, but it was fun. You know? It's good. Anytime you start the day out on the water.   Michael: Yeah, absolutely.   Tom: Is a bad day on the surf. Better than a good day, not on the surf guys.   Michael: Yes!   Emil: Of course. Michael would say yes, because he's the eternal optimist, I would say. Yes. There's times. I get really frustrated. Sometimes I get out of the water and I'm like, damn it. And I'm just like huffing and puffing on my way to my car and just like, but yes, in hindsight, it's always like, at least I got out on the water and did something fun   Michael: Without being too cliche. I think every time I get into the water, I'm able to think about stuff and I go in with problems and come up with solutions. Even if it's not a great day, it's way more fun. If it is a great day, given the choice between the two, I would absolutely choose better day, but I don't think I've ever had a bad day out in the water   Emil: Hashtag no bad days.   Michael: That's right.   Tom: What I've been doing lately is our community pool… I live in this neighborhood that used to be part of an HOA and there are still some of the HOA amenities, but now it's just like people have the option to join. And I joined cause it's like a really cool feature, but they have really, they need a monitor at the pool just to make sure that people are not bringing in guests and they limit the number of people and a bunch of other County related restrictions. But anyways, so I've been doing that and I've been working from down there. There's really good wifi. I'm out in the sunshine. I've been having some of my meetings with my background, with Emil, Michael and Pierre, where there's like, you know, a pool in the background and every, you know, couple of hours instead of going on a walk, I'll do a Cannonball and a that's the latest little update. And it's been a really, I don't know, I think there's something about being outside and being creative and that feeds into that. So that's been my, my new thing work from pool.   Michael: I'm curious to know what the HOA, you know, if they just everyone mutinied like, no more HOA!   Tom: Right. I think it fell apart. I think in like the seventies or eighties, I gotta, I gotta get to the bottom of it, but uh, yeah, really just random, big pool. Um, I don't know. Yeah. It's cool.   Michael: Killer. That's awesome.   Emil: How about you, Michael? What's new in your world?   Michael: Um, not a whole lot. I've been staying up quarantining at the in-laws and just kind of hanging out in here. It's been hot as ever like the surface of the sun. They lived just outside Sacramento, so it gets really, really hot up here, but we've been playing a lot of tennis, which has been really nice, cause there's nobody on the tennis courts. Cause it's so hot. And I think people drive by and like what a bunch of schmucks, like who's playing tennis, it's a hundred degrees outside. So it's, it's been a lot of fun to just get out and sweat and be outside.   Emil: Nice man.   Tom: Pierre with so many hobbies. I'd love to hear. I think you might mentioned getting in some woodworking again.   Pierre: Yeah. Yeah. I moved into a new place in Alameda and needed some furniture to fit my record collection in this little nook that we have. So I built like a little mid century modern table with some cubbies, for my records and a rack to hang my guitars.   Tom: That's a fantastic quarantine hobby and practical!   Emil: I give up, Pierre's just the coolest out of all of us. Let's just,   Michael: Oh, it's not even, yeah, it's not even close.   Pierre: Now. I got the edge though. I want to build all my furniture. We were looking at buying some online but now it's not seeming as attractive.   Michael: You can build a better.   Tom: I love it.   Emil: Awesome. And for anyone who's new to the show, wondering who that voice was. That is our producer Pierre.     Michael: All right, guys. So I want to break down some of the very common aversions to remote real estate investing and then talk through some of the counterpoints to each of those. I think any real estate investor at some point in their investing career has likely come up against some aversion or caught some flack. So I want to talk about the first one that I think might be one of the most common ones. And that is how could I possibly ever invest in real estate remotely? I don't know anybody in inter X market here. Tom, do you want to take a shot at this one? And then, you know how you would respond to someone who's throwing this at you?   Tom: Yeah, totally. And what a relevant first topic for the remote real estate investor. So I think a common misconception about real estate investing is that it, you are a lone wolf in and out doing on your own. And that is so far from the truth, especially, uh, as a remote investor. So what I would say for this is you should invest as a lot of time in building your team just because you are not in the region, you're specifically your local property manager. That's really going to be a key key point of being able to do this remotely. So a way to, you know, go about that is have a very thorough vetting process of identifying, sourcing and vetting your local property manager. And one of the great things that Roofstock does is when we open a market, what we'll do is we'll find from word of mouth and looking it up online, the top 20 local property managers. And from there we'll do phone interviews. And from there, we'll cut more down to where we have about five of them. And then we'll go into the office and visit them, get their standard operating procedures, get their, a copy of their lease that they use, get all of these different and then say, okay, yup. These are good guys that we would recommend. Now me as an investor, if there's a company that's doing that, that's great. That gives me a head start, but I will still take the time to vet them myself. One of the aspects we have within Roofstock Academy is some pretty thorough interview templates for talking to property managers and identifying good ones. But to combat that is you have a really thorough process of building your team local there on the ground. So, you know, once you have identified that property manager that is going to be your remote eyes and ears is really not that different than doing any kind of local investing. Once you have that trusting partner   Michael: And Tom breaking down that big rock into an even smaller bite sized rock, how do you go about finding these people? If you're not investing through Roofstock and they are not doing it for you, what's the actionable step that people can go take to go meet or start talking to these folks.   Tom: I always put an extra points on referral from people that I trust and know. So I'd say if you can get referrals that way from either lenders or other investors, you know, that's a great place to start, but you should expect what you inspect. So you need to go in and expect it in, inspect it to now that is a mouthful.   Michael: That's a tough one to say.   Tom: Yeah, yeah. We use that saying a bunch of our, the last company that I worked at, but the gist is if you don't do the work to verify, you should expect that it's not going to be that awesome. So you need to put in a little bit of the work of talking to these partners. So I digress a little, I guess let's see. I'm going back to your question. What was your question?   Michael: It was how can someone go find these people?   Tom: How can they find people? So, okay. References number one, number two, don't shy away from looking on the internet of just searching the city of who are the major property managers. And you know, this, isn't making the decision on who you're picking. This is just building that initial list to widdle down with conversations on the phone and potentially in house visits to make sure that it's all buttoned up and such. But I'd say again, your greatest resource would be getting referrals. Bigger pockets, I think on their forums have some references of some potential local property managers, but I would definitely expect what you inspect. So make a point of doing that. Like work.   Emil: One of the thing, I want to point out with this one, cause I remember getting this one a lot. When I first started investing, you know, people would be like, you're going to invest where across the country, like that's insane. What if something happens to the property? What if it gets vandalized? What if this and that? And the thing is, is those things happen, whether you're local or you're investing remotely, right? It's not like if you live 15 minutes away from the property, things aren't going to happen. Things are still going to come up no matter where you invest again, it's just making sure you have a partner. And that's why we keep talking about this property manager. Who's invested, who cares and who is a good member of your team. That's one of the big things we're going to be talking about is, you know, you hear a lot of real estate investors say you have to build a team. This is a team thing, especially if you're investing remotely. So that's the big thing is things will still happen. It's just a matter of getting the right partners to help you handle all these things.   Michael: You guys nailed it. I have nothing to add. The one thing I would add is that it really forces you, which I see it as a pro. Some people might see it as a con, but it forces you to get really good at time management. Because then they'll just like you said, stuff's going to happen. Whether it's next door or whether it's across the country. So if it's across the country, you've got to rely on people to take care of that. You've got to have set the systems up and placed on, like you were saying, to be able to have that dealt with without you needing to become involved. So if it's next door, you're going to be tempted to go fix it yourself or go deal with it yourself. But if it's across country, you physically can't. So being really good at time management and task delegation is I see it as a big pro.   Tom: I guess one last thing I'll say is, you know, ideally the home that you own and you're renting out is close to you, but there are so many benefits to investing remotely. Like you have access to so many more properties, so many different types of returns, such different like economies, like that makes it a little bit of barrier to entry is doing that extra homework of finding that great partner. So for me, being able to access these cash, flowing properties all over the US that extra work of finding the good property manager and then vetting them and building that relationship is worth it.   Michael: Yeah. And to that point, I mean, what's the alternative here, not investing or not investing remotely. And if you're in a really expensive market, you might not ever be able to break through. So if it's invest remotely and learn a bunch of stuff or not, I'd say you can't afford to not learn how to do some of this stuff.   Tom: Word.   Michael: Okay. So let's move on to the next one. Uh, so many times I hear people say this, I know someone who tried to investing in real estate and they would take these midnight calls, fixed toilets. I don't want to do that. Why would you ever want to do that? Emil, you wanna run with this one?   Emil: Yes. So this is another common one, right? So people say, okay, I get why you want to invest remotely, but are you going to handle fixes? What if someone calls you? And again, this goes back to what we were just talking about. It's this is why you hire third party, property manager, again, building the team, right? I would say the property manager is one of the most important pieces of your team. And the thing here is I don't know how to fix most problems, right? I would call a handyman or whatever anyway. Right? So the property manager is just, they're just your barrier. They're taking in those calls and they're finding a local specialist. Again, you're not going to be good at everything in your business. What you want to do is hire the professionals who are in the property. Management is the best that operating your property.  I would probably do a much worse job and I'd spend way more time than a property manager who does this for a living. So the rebuttal to that question is while I'm going to hire a third party property manager, who's an expert in the area. Who's going to manage it for me. And in return, they take a certain percentage of my rent each month. The other thing is the important thing here is this frees up a lot of your time, right? If you're constantly dealing with your operational stuff, you're not going to be thinking about how can I grow this? How can I scale it? A lot of us who are doing this, we have full time jobs, right? Like instead of fixing things on the weekend, I could be thinking about how can I start a side gig, earn more money or whatever. So I can go buy more properties, which I would argue is more important than handling the day to day stuff.   Michael: It's so interesting. I think people in the day to day world in life can really wrap their head around hiring professionals to do things, right. Nobody says, I'm not going to go buy a car because I don't know how to fix it. No, we all take it to the mechanic. I think it's the same thing with real estate and with investing where people are. So whatever reason can't get their head around that you might not have to do that, that kind of stuff. There are professionals that will take care of it for you.   Tom: Right. It's such a great point. I, I love that, your, uh, isms, Michael isms. I think we'll say, I think in talking to a lot of people who are interested in investing in real estate locally, they're like, yeah, then I can go and I can run out and paint the house when, or do these things that happened. It's like, no, you don't have to do that. And you know, we were talking about these costs that you incur with either repairs or maintenance or paying your property manager, but those are good costs to pay. And also at the end of the day, it's going to help you on your tax basis. It, you know, there's just so many tailwinds in doing this.   Emil: One last thing I want to add here is you can always later down the road, maybe you're ready to retire, right? Maybe you have X amount of properties. You have enough cashflow coming in. You want to retire. Maybe at that point, you feel confident enough where you do want to self manage. If you go back to episode five that we did with Chris Bennett, he talks about how he self his properties from thousands of miles away. I personally probably won't get to that point. I'd rather let somebody else deal with it. But it's always one of those things where I think you can even just observe your property manager for years, learn how they kind of run everything. And then if you want to down the road, you can switch back or switch to self managing. If that's interesting to you.   Michael: Funny, I think the longer I invest, the less I want new self-manage. I realize how much goes into like yeah, no way.   Emil: Yeah, same. I had somebody who I was talking about. Who's looking to buy a property on Roofstock and they were asking me the same thing. It's like, should I self man? He's like, I'm actually thinking about self managing first, just to like, get an idea of how all these things work and then handing it over a property manager. And I was like, if anything, I would do the complete reverse for all the reasons I just mentioned. Like, dude, you're brand new. Don't don't do it. It's going to be a nightmare. And you're never going to want to invest in another property again. Promise   Tom: That's the Emil Shour guarantee.   Michael: Awesome. Okay. So the next one I want to touch on is something I'm sure we've all heard a lot about, and it's that real estate is such a risky investment. Look at what happened in 2008. And so I'll take this one. If you guys don't mind, you know, my response is you're spot on don't invest. No, just kidding. I would say, you know, 2008 was the direct result of poor lending practices and those have definitely since changed. And so I don't anticipate seeing a financial disaster as a direct result of poor lending practices again. Don't misinterpret that as me having a crystal ball, that's just my personal opinion and be very may well see a financial disaster from other, but the poor lending practices seems to have gotten cinched up pretty tight. So I would actually argue that real estate is often a safer investment than the stock or the bond market.  And I think so often people say, okay, real estate is risky, but these other things aren't, there is also people that say real estate is risky, put your money in the bank. And to that, there's all kinds of counter arguments and counterpoints that are all based in fact about inflation and how you actually lose money. If it's just sitting in the bank, if you're not earning at least the inflation return, but so in looking at growth, the comparison to simply stocks, bonds, and real estate. So with real estate, there's just such a higher degree of control. The tax benefits and potential returns are typically going to be better than your average year in the stock market. I think it's pretty well accepted that stock market returns average between six to 8% in any given year real estate, you can do significantly better with that from a pure cash on cash return perspective that doesn't even account for the tax benefits associated with it, as well as the appreciation and loan pay-down equity that you're essentially buying into your property. So I personally I'm drinking the Koolaid. I think there are tons and tons and tons of facts and figures that you can throw at someone that's saying, Oh, it's such a risky investment. My guess is that they probably haven't invested in real estate. And if they have, they aren't looking to do the same type of thing you're doing remote investing with a property manager. So I just want to make sure that everyone's comparing apples to apples. Whenever they're hit with something like this, you really want to understand what's being talked about.   Tom: That's great and a good overview of like all the benefits of why, at least in our opinion, like the benefits outweigh the rewards. And what I love about drinking the Koolaid is there's so many different flavors of the Koolaid. So I kind of switch off on which one I'm most excited about. So the tax advantages is great. The immediate cashflow is great. The appreciation is incredible, but the Koolaid I've been sipping a little bit more of is the loan pay-down aspect. And it's just crazy. You can borrow like a hundred thousand dollars and someone else will pay it off for you. Like, I don't know, like wording it that way is really kind of mind boggling of how incredible investing is. So even if you're not cash flowing, say your cashflow is zero, but you still have a loan on the property. And you're not paying that loan. The person who was renting the property has paint alone. It's like obscene right property after you get a free property. So anyways, just kind of in your, going through your ran, I was just thinking of what is currently spinning through my mind a little bit heavier on like, wow, it's unbelievable. How much of an opportunity is. So anyways,   Michael: I thought you were gonna say that you're really excited about sour green, Apple Kool-Aid flavor.   Tom: That might be the loan pay-down is the sour green Apple.   Emil: Oh man. Kool-Aid when you're a kid and   Michael: The best, the best. How do you guys feel about Hawaiian punch?   Tom: I think American tastes have gotten a little bit less sweeter. At least I could rant on this for a little bit, but I'll finish it. There's been a shift in American culture kind of going to more subtle. Like if you look at like Hintwater LaCroix, if you compare like the drinks that are consumed today, versus the drinks that were consumed like 10 years ago, it's like hummingbird water back then. So I think I have a feeling if you had some Hawaiian punch, like you would be like, what the heck is, this is this like, meant for like a hive of, of hummingbirds, like anyways,   Michael: And it's that bright red too!   Tom: But the great thing about Koolaid is you don't have to put all the powder in. You can make it culturally adjustable by just putting a little bit of it in and boom, welcome to 2020, just 10% of it and have it. All right, go ahead.   Emil: I don't know how I can follow that up with something serious, but just to finish this section, I remember we had this blog post on the Roofstock blog talking about how did single family rental returns compared to stocks and bonds. And the Roofstock team did a little study. It was from 1992 to 2017. So a 25 year period. And if we found that single family rental returns were nearly identical to stock returns and the outperformed bonds with far less volatility. So that was one other thing I wanted to highlight here as well. Plus all the other benefits, like we talk about like tax advantages and all that, which I don't think was factored into this study.   Tom: I'm almost sure it wasn't.   Michael: Yeah, that makes sense. Because everyone's going to have a different tax basis.   Emil: Yeah. This was just looking at returns.   Michael: Okay, cool. So one of the last ones I want to touch on which we can all kind of tag team, but I kind of want to give it to Tom to give him a runway to rant. But so many people I've heard say owning real estate makes you a greedy landlord getting rich off the backs of other people. Tom, what would you say to all those people?   Tom: I think that people need safe housing, people need housing, and this is just kind of part of the wheel of providing that. So like I think above all, and we've talked about this before an earlier episode, like at the end of the day, it's about like habitable safe places for people to live. And I think as an owner, that's like a key part of the responsibility, so sure. Their incomes earned. It's like a little business that you own with every single one of the houses. But at the end of the day, like at this, we're talking about people's where they live and being able to provide that is valuable.   Emil: I think anyone who kind of believes this, I think you should a hundred percent become an owner because then you'll have a better idea of both sides of the coin. Right. You'll have owned, you'll have rented, I've rented, I've owned. I think having been in that spot right where you're a renter and you know, you've dealt with a landlord. I think it makes you more empathetic to your tenants. Like I want to provide a safe habitable unit, like Tom mentioned for those reasons. Like, if you're, if you're a good person, you care about other people, it's not like you're going to become an owner and all of a sudden just be like terrible person not providing for them. So I actually just, if you believe that, I think you should become an owner and just have experienced on both sides personally.   Pierre: As a renter, I have to say that it's way better to have a cool landlord.   Michael: Yeah. It's way better renting experience to have a cool landlord. Someone that's a real person as opposed to just a machine.   Tom: Yeah. And I don't, it has to be so black and white at that. Like you're only trying to maximize your return at every single look. I think there's a lot of places where that makes sense, but there's this humanity aspect. So one of my tenants, you know, started just recently had some issues around payment on like an employment and stuff. And you know, I talked to the, reached out to the property manager and said, Hey, you know, is this, is this something, you know, that has to do with the virus or they cause I'm very open to helping them out. Like if we need to make some adjustments or some concessions, you know, as an owner in real estate, you don't have to put on the monopoly outfit and just, you know, drill people into the ground, like, like half a conscious, like this is a good business to build wealth, but it's multidimensional, right? Because you're owning a place where somebody's living at. I think that's a really important aspect to have some humanity as an investor. So it's not, you have to go down this one path, right. You can do business consciously.   Michael: Yeah. And to anybody out there that thinks this or anybody out there that you know, is, is catching this type of comment from other people, I'd say, look, you need to understand what actually goes into real estate investing and real estate investors pay tons of money every single year to local school districts in the form of property taxes. So I'm not sure how that makes them greedy, but I would also follow that up with asking them how much money they contribute every year to their local school districts and see what they say. So there's so much money that gets poured into the local economy via real estate investors. And that comes in the form of real estate taxes, property management fees, paying local vendors for goods and services. So, so many investors spend a ton of money on these properties and local neighborhoods that actually are making them more attractive and welcoming, which can often lead to safer communities. So it's so easy for someone to just see one side of the coin and say, Oh, you you're collecting rents. You're making money off this person. Well, yeah, but also there's the other side where I'm contributing to society, paying taxes and making the schools better. So if you want me to stop doing that, that's a different conversation, but you really have to understand both sides of that coin to have an intelligible conversation about it.   Emil: Bravo, sir, drop the mic, please.   Michael: Mic drop it and walk away from that person. And just kind of in this same vein, I would also encourage anyone who comes up against any kind of resistance to really try to have a discussion with that other person about why they feel the way that they do. And try to understand why what they're talking about may or may not be applicable to your personal situation. Because I think real estate investing is this huge, huge topic. On the podcast, we talk about the remote real estate investing, which is one kind of niche of that, but there's so many other different topics and variances on real estate investing. So a lot of people here real estate investments like, ah, they're evil, they're the worst people in the world. Well, okay. Yeah. There might be some that are evil. It might be some of the worst people in the world, but you don't know me necessarily. And so let's try to understand what you're talking about and what I'm talking about. Cause so often they're not all the same thing.   Emil: I like that well said.   Michael: So just curious. I mean, have you guys ever run into any type of these comments? Have you gotten any flack for, you know, doing something that's maybe perceived as different from what your peers or others were doing? Emil: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I've mentioned on other episodes. My dad is a real estate investor here locally in Los Angeles and he thinks, you know, I'm kind of crazy. It's still, uh, when I was first starting, especially like what you're gonna buy property, where again, and it's common for people to feel that way because traditionally, everyone felt like, you know, my dad's whole thing is like, if I can't see it, touch it, feel it, there is no way. And that's fine. I think for some people, it just doesn't work mentally as just a blocker. But like Michael said, I think it's about being open to different things. And again, if the option is, do nothing or invest somewhere else to me, I'm not going to let that stop me personally.   Tom: Yeah. I think so many people have preconceived notion of what it means to be a real estate investors. And they have this idea of them running out with a hammer and taking the call and it's like, no, it's different than that. It's way more passive. It is way more team-driven, which has kind of been a theme of this episode. So throw away or assumptions on what it looks like and, and come to Roofstock Academy. No, but throw away your assumptions on what it looks like and look at some of these different strategies that we're talking about. If you're looking to do it in a more passive way and not throwing so much of your time of trying to make it work. The other comment that I've heard from some friends is, and this goes again, I think the greedy landlord piece is, you know, someone teasing, I was talking about real estate investment, like, Oh yeah. Always money and being a slum-lord. I'm like, you know, get outta here. Like I think, as I said, like there's a wellbeing aspect and like having these safe habitable places and working with your property manager to make sure that's part of your brand at the properties that you have, you know, it's, it's not about cutting corners and like maximizing every dollar. There's so much more to that.   Michael: Yeah. I totally agree.   Tom: And several of my friends have now invested, so I, uh, won the day. So go ahead.   Emil: And that was the point I was just about to make is I think when you network with other remote real estate investors and you realize there is an ecosystem of us doing it, it makes you feel a lot more confident. So if you don't know anyone else who's doing it, I highly recommend getting in touch with somebody network with them, talk, join groups, join, whatever. Just say, like build that network. I think it's, it's invaluable to have people around you who are doing things similar to you.   Michael: Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I first started investing, like you both, I caught so much of that flak of you're going where to invest, you know, why, what, that's stupid, you're there. You're crazy. And I'm like, yeah, well it makes sense to me. So, and now most of those friends I haven't since invested to, Oh, they see what's going on here. But yeah, so much of it too was I felt like this lone wolf, I didn't know there was a community out there. I didn't know the other people doing this. I just heard, yeah. People invest in real estate, but I didn't happen to know very many of them to ask them, you know, am I crazy? Is this insane? But now I realize no I'm laughing all the way to the bank. All right guys, any final thoughts on this stuff?   Pierre: I have a question in this vein of remote versus local investing. When would it make more investment sense to invest in your local market as opposed to remotely, if you live in an expensive area?   Michael: Super good question. I'll let you guys take it first.   Tom: I'll take the first stab at it. So excellent question Pierre of, when does it make sense to invest locally versus is remote. And I think it all has to start at what is your investment thesis? Like? What is your end game map? If I live in an area where I don't necessarily need the cashflow right now, and I'm pretty bullish on appreciation, I live in Northern California where properties are a little more expensive. Maybe it does make sense to invest in a property out here locally. If I'm looking for a property where there's a little bit more of a blend of appreciation and a bit more immediate cashflow, then maybe it would make sense to invest remotely. And to kind of get us to rephrase a little bit is, you know, what kind of returns are you looking for? Like if I had to make this analogous and that's right to like the stock market, like, am I investing in a growth company or am I investing in a new startup, but am I setting a value investing? Like what kind of strategy? And I think that will answer the question on where you're doing your investing at.   Emil: The only other thing I would add there is I think comes down to your comfort level. If you just can't for whatever reason, get yourself to invest remotely. I don't think you should just not invest. I think if you can invest locally, go for it, right. If you just can't get over the remote factor and you know, like you could be making better returns elsewhere. The thing is, is there's people investing locally doing insanely well and there's people investing remotely doing insanely well, I don't think this is a, you have to go local. You have to go remote. I think it's just by your comfort level, how much money you have to invest, you know, just your strategy and that your thesis, like Tom mentioned   Tom: Price point, great point. And also the volume of homes available. I mean, you're limited just in your own backyard of how many homes are for sale. Go ahead, Michael. I see you.   Michael: Yeah. I see you too buddy.   Tom: The light in me sees the light in you!   Pierre: Namaste!   Tom: Namaste   Michael: You know, from avatar, we need to hook up our ponytails.   Tom: Yeah. I'm touching the microphone.   Michael: So the last, I think those are both really great points. The last thing I want to add too it, is what the goal is and what are you trying to accomplish? But one thing I don't think that it has mentioned is the idea of house hacking, which is kind of this concept of you buy a house bigger than you need or a place bigger than you need and you live in it and rent out the other room. So you're kind of getting the best of both worlds and a kind of hybrid approach with, I have a place to live now and I'm making some rental income alongside with that. And so if you do that well enough, you could absolutely see similar returns to a traditional investment property at distance, but get the benefit of living in a house locally. And so what I think is really important to look at as the true opportunity cost and true total cost, because if you're investing somewhere else and continuing to rent while there's a cost associated with that, versus if you buy a house hack locally and are living in it, well, there's a different cost associated with that, but you're not paying rent anymore. So look at the whole picture. And I think just like Tom mentioned, you know, look define what your goal is. So I think I ha how's hacking is a really, really great way to get started in real estate investing and kind of get two birds with one stone and then just like Emil said, what the price point is and what your, you know, you're only going to qualify for X amount of dollars in a loan if you're going that route. And so that's going to be a limiting factor as well.   Pierre: What about buying from a family member would buying from a parent, make it more interesting in the way of tax benefits or anything like that?   Tom: I mean, a huge way to get ahead in real estate is any kind of discount to valuation. So like if there's any kind of sweetheart deal with that, I mean, you don't want to take advantage of your parents, but like if they're like open to giving you a little bit of a discount, like, man, that could be an immediate, huge head start because you already have like a little bit of equity in the house where some of the tools that we talked about pulling out equity, like cash out refi or HELOCS or all of that stuff like that can give you an advantage there in just the question of like, let's say you're paying fair market value. It really depends on if that house fits your investment thesis. So looking at the type of returns that you would get, then if it fits that then great. That makes sense. I'd say just kind of like specific to your question around family members. Like if you're able to get a little bit of, maybe it's not sweat equity, it's love equity. That's a huge step up.   Michael: One other thing too, that I've seen here that works really well. Especially if the house is owned free and clear is your family can finance it for you basically be the bank and you pay them a monthly payment as opposed to getting a mortgage. You can just get, you know, you guys decide what the terms are amongst yourselves. And it's so much easier. The one thing that I definitely would encourage people to look out for and I harp on this literally every day in the Academy is property taxes and especially if it's in California, because I asked my attorney once I was like, what if I just sell this house to my wife for a dollar? Because my property tax base is X, what my property tax has dropped to a dollar. And she's like, yeah, no, that's not how it works. If it's, if it's priced way under market, they're going to assess it at the fair market value and tax you on the fair market value. So even if you're getting a discount on the purchase price, that's great. You just want to be aware of what the taxes are going to look like after the fact. And especially with a lot of these family properties, they've been in the family for so long, they were purchased at such a low tax rate. So being aware of the tax rate and what that's going to jump to is really important for sure. It's going to move in California, but you just want to be aware of it. If you're in another state doing this type of deal, just be, you know, find out what that tax rate looks like. But great questions, man.   Tom: I got one more for this. So in the theme of this episode of your friends being able to speak intelligently, when you're, when people try to talk you out of investing in real estate, why aren't you just buying somebody else's property? Isn't there like a reason they're selling it? Why, why, why, why   Michael: Is it trash?   Tom: Isn't it trash if somebody's selling it, it must be a bad deal or something wrong with it. Michael, would you like to lead this one?   Michael: Yeah, it's a super great point and a really great question. I think I hear all the time in the Academy. I mean, it's just goes back to one. Man's trash is another man's treasure, but also you're probably not buying trash. I mean, people sell for any number of reasons. So we'd never know a motivation unless we ask. And so often sellers are selling out of desperation, whether that's, you know, divorce or they need cash for something. So it could be a really great property, could be really great deal. They're just selling it because they need the cash. They could also be selling because they got a nonperforming assets to be performing. And now it's really great. And so we talk about that a lot is adding value. You buy a crummy property, you fix it up. And now it's a really nice property. I mean, that's what turnkey is. Someone is selling a perfectly functioning and performing asset. And so giving people an opportunity to buy it means that they get to make some profit in the middle. So I definitely definitely disagree with that wholeheartedly. I think that people need to understand that there are so many reasons why someone could be selling a property.   Emil: No, the only other one I would add is what we call a tired landlord. So someone who just been doing this for 30, 40 years, they're done right. They've maybe they've been managing it this whole time by themselves. And they're like, I'm just, I've made my money. My market has appreciated. I'm going to do well on the sell. I just want to get out of the business. So they're tired and they just want to move on. That's another one.   Michael: I love how you said that. They're just, they're just exhausted.   Emil: Just, just tired man. I could,   Pierre: Did you have your dad in mind when you're commenting on this?   Emil: My dad is such a, such a tired landlord. He's an exhausted landlord. He is. He is just like, pardon me. Thinks he loves complaining about being a landlord though. It's just like in him that he likes to compete. It gives him a discussion topic.   Tom: Yeah. My comments would be on this is concerns around, you know, why is the sellers have a process and the way that you evaluate the homes that is consistent. So once the property goes through the ringer where you're looking at, you know, condition value, tenant, if they're, it is occupied, all that stuff, you can really make the assessment. If it's a good or a bad deal. And don't overthink seller motivations, just like Michael said, there's going to be any number of reasons within Roofstock there's all kinds of different types of sellers. There are individuals, there are bigger institutions, there are funds and sometimes the funds just expire or sometimes they move, you know, the geographic concentration, they might move to a different market. So I wouldn't overthink it and just do your homework and follow the right steps and doing your evaluation of the property.   Michael: Okay. So now I've got a question for you guys kind of a fun one. And just so all of our listeners know, I didn't tell a meal pier and Tom, what the question was before we started recording this. So they are totally going to be blindsided by this. And it's a, it's a pretty traditional question. It's one that, you know, I think is asked pretty regularly of people, but I put a little bit of a spin kind of unique twist to it. So the question is you're stranded on a desert Island. There's the very typical question that I want to know the answer to of what two items would you sum into your location to help you escape to survive? But also I want to know where's the most ideal setting for said deserted Island,   Emil: Bali, a surf board, because the waves are going to be amazing deserted Island. I'm just, I don't even know if I'd want to leave. Honestly. I'm not trying to get out of there if I'm just stranded in Bali, no one around amazing waves.   Tom: Do you guys watch naked and afraid?   Michael: Yeah. It's so good.   Tom: What would your survivor score be?   Michael: Oh, I would start it probably a six and end at a 7/8. Oh, underdog performing. Sorry. I interrupted. Go ahead.   Emil: Alright, so I'd want to surf board item two…   Tom: Are we picking locations or picking what we're bringing with us? What's the situation?   Michael: Both! Emil: A laptop that has a never ending battery and access to internet.   Michael: No dude, we're not playing this “imagine if the best invention” game.   Emil: You did, you did not give me any rules, constraints. It's up to my imagination. Creativity.   Michael: All right. That's reasonable. And the first thing I would do is use said computer magical computer to get a ticket for my wife and daughter to come join me at the Island.   Tom: So, if you're going down, you're dragging them with you.   Emil: That's right. Tom, what would you, what would you bring and where would you be?   Tom: I think I'd be on the oldest Island of the Hawaiian islands. I'd be in Kauai just because it's, you know, lots of fish around there. I would bring some Kool-Aid from 2000 just cause I know it's diluted. I could just use a little bit. That's going to last me a very long time to match my 20, 20 taste buds. It would last a very long time and yeah, I think I would somehow finagle my wife and son to come join me too with that magic computer that I would borrow from Emil. So there we go. I got Kool-Aid and magic computer.   Michael: All right, Pierre, where are you stranded and what would you bring?   Pierre: Hmm, maybe somewhere in the Mediterranean, like Malta and I would bring a guitar and a hatchet.   Michael: Nice see. Pierre's the real survivor here.   Tom: Which guitar?   Pierre: I'd bring my acoustic. Probably my Taylor. Yeah, my guitar and a hatchet. Cause I forget what the saying is exactly, but it's with a pocket knife, you can survive, but with a hatchet you can live like a king. a nice I'd built some stuff for sure.   Michael: Nice.   Tom: You're already practicing. You're hurting right now. We go to peers does desert Maltin paradise and he's mid century. Nice couches beds built. Starts a popup shop.   Tom: You're turn Michael.   Michael: I would probably go to be in Bermuda because I hear some crazy stuff happens there. I'd be very curious to see what's going on. My two items would probably be a satellite phone so I could order all kinds of great stuff. And if I say anything other than hatchet, I'm looked like a chump. I think I should also bring a hatchet.   Tom: Your survival skill just went down. Your Pierre's survivors went down because you had advanced tools.   Michael: I could have brought a chop saw.   Tom: Yeah. You just went to a 5.5.   Michael: Oh, it's such a ridiculous show. Naked and Afraid. But it's so interesting to see what people bring I'm waiting for the day with two people bring the same thing. Like they both bring a lighter and like, Oh crap. Like we didn't talk about this beforehand.   Michael: Well, that was our show. Everybody. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to give us a rating or review wherever it is. You listen to your podcasts, subscribe as well. And we look forward to seeing you on the next one.   Tom: Happy investing.   Emil: Happy investing.  

In this Episode Tom, Michael and Emil share their systems that take the headache out of acquisitions and ownership to effectively scale up.  --- Transcript:   Tom: Greetings and welcome to the remote real estate investor. My name is Tom Schneider, and I'm here with Emil Shour and Michael Albaum. And today we're going to be talking about something that is near and dear to my heart. We're talking about building systems. We're talking about automation. We're talking about scaling. We're going to touch on these topics and a couple of specific strategies as it relates to acquisitions and ownership. All right, let's do it.   Tom: All right. Welcome back to The Remote Real Estate Investor. Before we get going today, we're going to do a quick introduction from the host a little bit about ourselves and our experience and background and all that good stuff. So, Michael, why don't you go ahead and lead us off?   Michael: Sure. So I'm Michael Albaum. I used to work in my past life as a professional fire protection engineer in the commercial property insurance industry. So everyone has to bear with me if I speak in math terms, cause I'm a reformed engineer. I've been an investor for the better part of a decade and started very traditionally with single families. And now I've found a, found my stride and niche with multifamily value, add projects out in the Midwest. And I'm also the head coach of the Roofstock Academy program and meal. Can you introduce us to yourself and your mustache?   Emil: Hey everybody. My name is Emil Shour. I work on the marketing team here at Roofstock. My fun fact is I actually bought a couple properties through Roofstock before I was ever working here. It was a big fan of what the company was doing and now lucky enough to get to help spread the word. And I own a couple single family rentals across the Southeast and Midwest.   Tom: And my name is Tom Schneider. I am the director of investor education here at Roofstock. My career has been focusing on putting technology process to scale and build systems. So this episode is particularly exciting for me is how I do this personally, with my investing. I've been in real estate investing for over the past 10 years, and I'm also a California broker.   Michael: Nice.   Emil: The only one of us who's licensed. Where do you have your license hung somewhere as a broker?   Tom: You can just hang it right around here.   Michael: Yeah. Hang it on yourself.   Tom: Hang it on myself.   Michael: The broker test. Isn't so much more work than just the agent test, right?   Tom: It is. They've made it harder when I got my broker's license, it wasn't quite as difficult, but they made the experience requirements a lot more difficult. It was kind of funny. I initially worked in acquisitions for one of the publicly traded rates and literally the day that I passed the broker test, the person who was leading our technology says, Hey Tom, we need a can-do guy to help build out a bunch of systems. And I was like, okay, cool. Let's do it. So I got my broker's license and then proceeded to never use it until I did use it when I bought my own house. So I guess it paid for itself there.   Emil: What is the difference between an agent and a broker?   Tom: I'll tell you, I should kind of have an idea on this. So an agent needs their license to be hung underneath the broker. The idea is a broker understands the business a little more and folks who are agents can eventually become a broker. If they wish to, they basically can operate on their own. So within California, you can apply for an agent or a broker. And the broker aspect of the test is a little bit harder and the requirements to get it is a little bit more difficult.   Emil: Got it. So a broker can do everything an agent can do, but an agent can't do everything a broker can do.   Tom: Yes. Yes, that's correct. That's a good way to put it.   Michael: Getting ready for my broker tests.   Emil: Awesome. I've already learned something on this episode!   Tom: Early and often, baby early and often. All right. We'll jump into some system stuff. So we have a variety of different things and we're going to have a different one of the hosts take the lead in talking about. So we're going to start with acquisitions. And Emil, why don't you lead us off on some systems, some practical systems that folks can do on their own.   Emil: It might be a little obvious, but I still think it's worth stating. Set up automated filters and alerts on the places you look for properties. If you're on Roofstock. If you guys are familiar with stock is our marketplace where people can buy and sell single family rental properties. You can go and filter by whatever meets your criteria and save that filter. So you get notifications when new properties hit the site that meet that filter requirement, same thing on other sites like Zillow or Redfin or realtor.com, wherever you're, once you've figured out your buy box. And I'll talk about that in a second. Defining it, plugging it in as a filter so you get automatic notifications cause you want to be on top of those listings, right? When they hit the site, right? It's a lot more effective than just constantly going on them and checking your listings. Even though I do that all the time anyways,   Michael: I don't know about you guys, but I constantly get notifications from Zillow and Redfin about new properties that have hit the market, but I didn't save a filter even, you know, I searched there twice or three times and now I was like, Oh great. You're super hungry for properties in that market. So I'm just getting blasted by these emails. Yeah.   Emil: Every time I look@realtor.com, like I was curious the other day about like, what do multifamily in Bakersfield sell for? And now I've just, I've been getting Bakersfield filter notifications from realtor.com. It's like, man,   Tom: What's cool about these websites and the filters, a little pro tip is you can get really granular with your filters and set up multiple filters. So what I'll do is on my inbox that I have all set up multiple inboxes and I'll set up a filter within my I'm gonna, we're gonna do filters on filters. This is a very layered,   Michael: Filter-ception   Tom: Yeah. Very meta. So within my inbox, shout out Gmail, just kidding   Emil: @Gmail, let us know if you want to sponsor us.   Michael: Yeah. I've never heard of this Gmail, but this Tom Schneider guy talked about it.   Tom: Anywho, I set up like a master folder for like incoming property leads. Right. Then within that I'll set up additional folders for each different type of either region or property type. So as new listings that meet my criteria are hitting. I have them in a nice clean folder, so, Oh, great. A new Florida property. That's a duplex in this area and I have a special folder for that. What I'll also do is oftentimes timing can be pretty important and moving quickly, instead of setting up a filter that comes just once a week or once a month, since I have this infrastructure within my Google Gmail, shout out again, I'll have it actually doing real time. So I'm not getting pinged in my main inbox if I'm working on some other stuff, but I have a way to see immediately based on whatever that criteria it's hitting that inbox. So again, the super simple paraphrase, but this isn't that complicated. I have a bunch of different inboxes within my Gmail. And then within the, my buying platforms, I'll set up many filters and many alerts and many immediate alerts. So it'll hit right into my Gmail and I'll know at that time, all right, this one looks pretty good and I can move pretty quickly. And I don't have that issue of, Oh, Property. It's already pending. Like I'm not passively looking for it. It's proactively hitting me as soon as it hits the market and I can act and jumped on it. So that was my extra tidbit on that piece of mill,   Michael: That description Tom was amazing. It gave me such a visual of kind of how you operate. And it made me reflect about how I operate. And you, I'm picturing this nice, neat cubby with nice section organizers. And mind's like just a fricking melted pizza, but it's just crap everywhere. It's, I'm so jealous. I want to be like you and I grow up and have these systems, but in place, I love that.   Tom: That's why we make a great team, Michael. That's why we make great team   Michael: Coffee-man, and melted pizza.   Emil: Oh yeah. I'm not surprised Tom is like the most organized out of all of us internally. And I'm not surprised when it comes to acquisitions. You're equally as organized with the pick and choose you pick and choose. There's definitely lots of messages. So one thing, if you're going to one of the sites we mentioned, and you're not sure how you should set your criteria, just know that it's okay to start a little wider. And then as you've looked at more and more listings, I think you'll get better at defining your buy box. I know we talk about it a lot and we say, okay, build your buy box. And sometimes it's hard to just like, know what to choose. Right. I kind of started larger. For example, I chose a couple of different markets, couple of different properties, size, like a bigger property size.   Tom: I like it. You feel that you need to shoot with a sniper. I keep using these weapon analogies, but it's okay if you're not sure to start with like a broader spray and then work your way down as you refine what you're looking for. But I'd say it's better to keep it an open, an open range, and then, then shrink that down.   Michael: Nick it down.   Emil: Yup, exactly. And also because sometimes whoever uploaded the listing, sometimes they don't include that information. Right? So if you have like really, really specific defined criteria, you may miss something where whoever listed at the seller or the agent or whatever, just didn't submit that information. It doesn't hit the filter. I've noticed that on a couple of things.   Michael:   And just a pro tip for everybody listening to, if your budget is a hundred grand on the high end, set your filter up to one 20 to include properties that are listed above that because you might offer a 100K and get it. Versus if you set your filter criteria right at your end budget, you might never have seen those properties.   Emil: Yeah great tip, go like 10, 20% above what you are actually planning on spending.   Michael: It also gives you an idea of what the next tier of property looks like. So if you did want to ultimately spend more, no. What would that buy you?   Tom: One last piece of advice on building a bike box is to think about how many properties do you practically want to evaluate at a given time? And yeah, you can control this with your buybacks by how targeted it is. So if I have a lot of time and I want to look at a lot of product properties, I'm going to have a really wide buy box. If I don't have a lot of time right now to evaluate properties, I'm going to tighten my buybacks down a little bit. So one way to think about it is to work backwards about what your kind of capacity is for evaluating effectively.   Emil: It's also, I think when you're first starting out, I think it's okay to, again, to nail this point of going a little broader, I think with time and experience and having different property types, you'll start to get an idea of like, this is the exact property I want in this exact area.   Tom: Awesome. Michael, do you wanna jump on your next acquisition system?   Michael: Yeah, absolutely. So, so much of this, in addition to searching, can be done socially kind of quote unquote. And so just talking to everybody who's willing to listen and maybe even some of those who aren't, about what it is that you're looking for. So just in everyday conversations, talk to friends, family members, people in your network about what it is you're doing and what it is you're looking to do because so many eyes are going to be better than, than just one set. So if someone then comes across a property just in their everyday life and thinks, Oh, well, I remember Tom mentioning that he was kind of looking for something like this. That can be a great deal funnel for you as well. Property managers can also be a fantastic, fantastic source of deals for you, which is pretty automatic. You just tell them, Hey, this is what I'm looking for. You, you set your filter, so to speak with them and any property that comes across their radar. Oh, Hey. Yeah. I remember, you know, Emil, I kind of managed this property for him. And he's looking for something like this. It becomes so easy. And so automatic that it's one of those things you can just kind of say it and continue saying it and then forget it. There's not a whole lot of nurturing that has to be done with those types of things, other than some, you know, reminders. And don't be the person that, Hey, have you found any properties yet? Have you found any properties? Just put it out into the universe and just kind of let it, let it bake for a bit and see.   Tom: It's like The Secret. You guys remember that book?   Pierre: I'm still waiting for that check in the mail.   Tom: It's coming! Wasn't it The Secret and then The Answer as a followup or something.   Emil: Yeah.   Tom: Incredible. Incredible marketing.   Michael: I didn't read that one. What's The Secret about?   Pierre: It's the laws attraction.   Michael: Uh, okay. Okay.   Pierre: It's when you focus on something for long enough and eventually it comes to you, essentially.   Emil: That's right. You don't have to actually do anything. Just think about it every day. Hope for it every morning, but no action required. Just think about it.   Michael: Million dollars, Million dollars! So it's interesting. So for the Academy book club, we just did Think and Grow Rich. And I thought that, you know, that was such a great title by Napoleon Hill and we read it and I thought it was really awesome and talked about a lot of kind of high level things, mindset type stuff. And it was talked about very similar type stuff. And it was, it was interesting. They're all talking about, you know, if we stand around here and talk about blue cars, we'll probably go out and see a bunch more blue cars. And it's not so much that there are more blue cars on the road. It's just that now we're cognizant of that thing. It's kind of front of mind. So it appears more often for us.   Tom: Yeah. I love that example, Michael, cause not all systems are digital or not all systems are technology, but it's, it's leveraging the people side of your network of funneling in deals through that. So at the end of the day, like a lot of real estate is a people business and nurturing that and building a system that you want and funneling them in deals is excellent.   Michael: All the real estate meetups that I went to, um, pre COVID, they all talk about they'll usually start or end with the needs and wants section. So people talk about, okay, this is what I need or is it “have and wants”   Tom: Maybe it's a “give and a take”, I think I know what you are talking about.   Michael: Yeah. You announced to the group, what it is that you have to offer to the group and then what it is that you're looking for from the group or from in general, until people say I have money and I'm looking for a deal or whatever. And so it's that those are great opportunities as well. And so again, just kind of reiterating, put it out to the world, don't be embarrassed by it. Don't be shy about it. Just make it known what it is you're looking for. Cause it's tough to help people if they haven't told you what it is that they're looking for.   Tom: Awesome. Great example. All right. So I'll touch on the last acquisition related systems slash tip slash ways to scale. And this is a special perk that we have within Roofstock Academy is that members can actually export the listings on Roofstock into Excel. And whenever you can do things evaluating a lot of deals at once, like doing it in Excel, that's a great way to do it. So I guess that the main theme is, you know, try to batch processes together. And in this particular example of being able to download all the listings in Excel, batch that whole evaluation of the whole inventory, you know, in one run where, okay, I'm filtering down to these particular property types or, Oh, I'm filtering down for this particular return. So being able to, if you can get a spreadsheet of what you're evaluating or any kind of way, being able to batch it together, do it saves time.   Michael: And for anybody that's really intimidated by Excel because I know it can often seem very intimidating. There are some really great free courses on YouTube and there are also paid courses. If you want to get more in depth with it, about how to use Excel and maybe how to do some of that batch sorting because it's a really powerful tool. So I guess we're plugging Excel and Gmail in this episode.   Emil: Shout to Google and Microsoft!   Tom: Let's continue on. We're going to go into ownership now and Emil why don't you lead us off.   Emil: Cool. All right. So the first one we're gonna be talking about is cash flow automation. So the first thing I do and you guys let me know if you do this as well. I set up auto pay on all my mortgages. I don't want to think about, did I pay this mortgage? I have to mail a check. I auto pay everything just to make it super easy. Especially when you have multiple properties automating. It is like, step number one. You guys do that as well.   Michael: Yeah, definitely. Absolutely.   Tom: Do you also impound your insurance and property taxes when you pay your mortgage payment?   Emil: I do. I know a lot of people won't because they want that capital and would rather use it throughout the year versus giving it to your lender, to hold it to whatever you like to be able to use that capital. I just don't want to have to think about like, okay, I need to come up with X amount to pay my property tax and insurance. It's kind of like duping yourself into thinking you're richer than you are.   Michael: I don't, I don't use the impound accounts. I will, if they'll give me a better rate for the mortgage. And then as soon as the loan closes, I cancel the escrow account and just pay it myself.   Tom: Sneaky move Michael.   Michael: It's something I'm considering doing just from like a meal mentioned ease of operations. It's just one less thing to think about. So it can be great either way.   Emil: Why do you not impound it?   Michael: For the exact reason you mentioned there are significant funds that are going to be paid to property taxes and insurance on an annual basis. And so I'd rather have that kind of, well, that one time hit is kind of a bummer. I'm able to use that cash. I mean, it's a significant amount such that it's usable on a monthly basis to do other stuff with. And so I just know in the back of my mind that, okay, come this time of year, I've got this big, big property tax bill that's going to be due.   Emil: Yeah. I wonder if there is something there in terms of like at a certain scale, it's a lot more money to be working with versus like, let's say you have one to five properties just for ease and it's not that much extra capital that you'd be able to do something with.   Michael: Yeah, no, that's a good point. I mean, I think everyone should think about it for themselves because even at that five property level, one to five, your property tax bill could be, you know, $25,000 if we're talking about.   Emil: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Good point.   Tom: Just to clarify impounding your taxes insurance is if you haven't deduced this or don't already know this, it's when you pay your mortgage payment, the mortgage company will also collect a percentage of the annual taxes.   Michael: They'll take one 12th of the annual tax bill, one 12th of the annual insurance bill with your mortgage payment on a monthly basis. So that you're paying equal payments every month. You're not getting hit with your tax bill or insurance bill just at one time.   Tom: And then the mortgage company will just pay it for you. So you don't have to think about it. So, boom, that's another system. So that's a good question about, you know, do you use that money in the meantime, if you don't have to pay it for 12 months, but that could be another potential system. Alright. Emil, I broke your flow.   Emil: Finishing up there. My favorite thing is when they audit your account and you have an excess balance and they send you like a check for a couple of hundred bucks and you're like, Ooh, it's like a Christmas bonus or something. Hanukkah bonus baby. For me,   Tom: I think I might've mentioned this on another podcast. I like it, but it pisses me off. Cause I'm like, oh geez, what check am I missing? Yeah, it makes me think like, okay, this is great having this check. But I'm like, like honestly concerned that like I may have missed something in the mail because man, there's just so much junk mail as a real estate investor. The wholesalers that email you all kinds of things and like just general, getting a lot of mail. I just get really concerned that I see a check here. That's awesome. But what checks am I not seeing? Because they're buried in between a Serina and Lilly or whatever, a  catalog, that's like five pounds and 500 pages. Anyways, go ahead, please continue your answer.   Emil: No, please continue your rant. I want to hear that.   Tom: I got to build it up a little bit. I got to build it up a little bit.   Michael: Tell us more about what other junk mail you received.   Tom: We Buy Ugly Houses Houses. So many of those. Yeah. If there's any wholesalers listening, I want off your mailing lists.   Emil: Okay. So the next one, this one's probably obvious a lot of people, setting up ACH auto payment from your property manager. So they collect your rent checks. I don't even know if any property managers do this, but like sending you a check in the mail. I imagine most people already set up you raising your hand, Michael. Cause do you do that?   Michael: I used to get paper checks because my property manager was pretty old school and I said, okay, please, please, please, please, please, please, please. Can we do this and other way? Yeah, this is just not awesome anymore.   Emil: I mean, so that should be like, even part of your PM property management vetting, right? Like, do you do, do you have an online portal where you ACH payments to me? So just make sure you set that up. If it's an option, most property managers in 2020, you will have that.   Emil: Maybe Michael went to one that was established in 1925 or something.   Michael: 1833    Tom: Is this is the one in Alaska?   Michael: No, it's actually properties that I've since sold, but out in Missouri kind, of rural Missouri. And so just to expand upon this a little bit is I think we've talked about in another episode, but my property manager, there was only willing to use a certain bank or the local bank branch wasn't anything that we had locally or that I use. So they would go to this bank deposit, the rent check and then would cut me a check to my bank. It was just a whole pain in the butt kind of thing. So what we've automated is now they'll deposit the rent check and then those rent checks we'll get bill paid from that bank to my local bank where I actually do my banking and then from there and get distributed. And so if you can automate as many of those processes as possible, it becomes much easier. So ACH transfer a potentially from multiple bank accounts to multiple bank accounts,   Tom: Are you're hiding something Michael? I'm just kidding.   Michael: I don't know. You ever been to the Cayman islands?   Tom: That's interesting that a local property manager had a preferred bank that they worked with and yeah, yeah.   Michael: They're just like no Wells Fargo or B of A or union bank out there. So they're like, this is what we use. It's like cool, pony express it over to me.   Emil: Carrier pigeon that's right. So the last one in this section, we recommend I do this. I have a separate bank account for all real estate stuff. It just makes things easier, especially come tax time. I also just like having it separate cause I try to treat real estate investing like a business to have its own checking account checking account. I use Chase, it's free to set up another checking account and it's just much easier to track things going in and out and it'll make your CPA's life easier. Do you guys do that as well?   Michael: I was going to ask if you guys have separate accounts for every property?   Tom: You know, it's funny, I just got off a Roofstock Academy coaching session before we started recording this episode and we were just jumping into it with a member exactly on this topic. I don't, I use just one account for all properties. It's just, I don't know, easier. And I don't understand necessarily see the value. Not that it's a lot of overhead to have different bank accounts because you can set them up for free on so many different banks, but I just use one for all the rental properties and yourself, Michael,   Tom: I have one account per LLC. And so I've got LLCs that own multiple properties. So all that was kind of funnel into that one. Yeah. What about you, Emil?   Emil? I'm just one checking account where everything funnels into nice. Just for ease. Makes it easy.   Pierre: What would be one of the benefits of setting up an individual bank account for each property?   Tom: The benefit of setting up, if you were to set up a different bank account for each property, you know, what I like about it at a portfolio level is I just have a really tight grip on cashflow within that portfolio. If I was to do it at an individual property, man, it would be just so clear if I'm making money or losing money. You know, we have these assumptions that we use when we are acquiring properties, but ultimately, you know, when the rubber hits the road, you hope to hit those or even exceed them. But you know, by having an individual bank account for that property, you have a really immediate, transparent view into, is this property performing to how I was projecting it with the cashflow.   Michael: I was going to say, it's a really good question Pierre. I'm glad you asked it. So because I only have the one bank account set up, I think I'm echoing Tom's viewpoints and opinions that, yeah, it's very easy to see what the actual numbers are, but I found that I just keep an Excel file, very detailed document of, Hey, anytime there's an expense on a given property, I log it the date, the expense, and then the dollar amount. And so that for me, suffices as a very similar type of scenario without the headache, I would argue of having 10 different property accounts searching through which one has what I've got it all in a file for me, that's worked really, really well over the years.   Emil: And your property manager, a lot of them you'll have a portal where you'll be able to see all your rent, all the management fees they've taken, they handle a lot of the smaller maintenance. So you'll see those expenses as well. So you also have your property manager, you can lean on, that's going to keep track off a lot of this stuff. The only other thing to track outside of that would be your payments to your lender and then property taxes and insurance.   Michael: There's all kinds of miscellaneous stuff that you'll likely have to pay outside of that. So like business licenses, if you're required in that state or LLC fees, franchise tax fees in, you know, wherever you live and wherever it's registered, just misc miscellaneous stuff. And I just attach that to each property and whatever it's paid for, you know, even might have to pay a contractor, something if they're that's outside the scope of what your property manager is doing. And so having a place to document all of that, I find it to be very, very, helpful.   Emil: Yup. I also keep a detailed Excel. I don't do it every month. I do it like bi-annually.   Michael: Do you do it when you incur the expense or you do it as a reconciliation, every, you know, twice a year,   Emil: The latter I do reconciliation. It's probably not the best, but I don't know.   Pierre: Yeah. I mean, we're talking about automation,   Emil: We're telling you what to aim for. We're not necessarily saying we all do this all the time.   Michael: Do, as I say, not as I do.   Emil: Exactly. And you know, you don't have to be perfect in all these areas. We're giving people just different ideas, you know, what makes sense to automate.   Pierre: Cool   Michael: It's one of those too like, we all have bad habits that we've fallen into over the years. And now in hindsight, we'd say, man, I wish I had formed this better habit. So here's what I would do differently. And it's so hard to break those bad habits. Like it's so hard.   Tom: Getting the grove for sure.   Michael: Yup. Very true.   Emil: One other thing, we don't have it here, but I want to talk about it as well. This kind of goes back to acquisition automation, but, it goes back to the concept of paying yourself first. So a lot of us, you know, we have a full time job or we have W2, whatever it is, make sure you set up like an automatic percentage that every paycheck coming in is going towards your investing. So right now, like my process is 20% of every paycheck automatically gets taken out of my checking, put into a separate investing account. And I highly recommend people who are listening, check out a website called I will teach you to be rich by Ramit Satie he has this awesome guide. If you look up, I will teach you to be rich, personal finance guide. It shows you how to automate all this stuff, like having separate accounts for different things you're saving up for. I found that super easy and like a really good way to separate your money and like have kind of different categories and use them for separate things. So I have a separate investing savings account that automatically, you know, income coming in goes into that. So that's another automation thing I do.   Michael: Piggybacking off that a meal I've also automated paying myself first from the rental amount every month. So when we do our analyses, we see, okay, we've got the mortgage payment, property taxes, all these other expenses that may or may not actually occur on a monthly basis, but we modeled them that way. So it makes the cash flow easier to understand. And so your property is going to collect rent. They're going to take their fee and are going to give you the rest. Well, now that's a huge chunk of change, but we've still got to pay some of these other expenses. And so we all have calculated on a monthly basis what our cash flow should be. And so I will automatically set up that deduction amount from my property bank account, going to my personal bank account, if I'm planning on using that cashflow for everyday life stuff. So if it's a hundred bucks a month, I just receive rent on the 10th or whatever of the month. And then I automatically have a hundred dollars transfer into my personal account. Everything else stays in the property account to then pay all those other expenses for. And at the end of the year, you had a good year. You might have some extra dollars left over and you can pay yourself again. Or if you had a bad year, you might need to put some additional money back into that. But it's a really easy way to just start collecting money from your properties without overdoing it.   Tom: I like it. So the next operational system I'll jump on, has to do with documentation. So if you're an active investor, you will be regularly buying new properties. You will be regularly refinancing had a good episode, I guess it would be two weeks ago. Once this episode is launched on ways to take out equity, anywho, when you are going through that exercise, you're going to need the same documents again and again and again, you're going to need a copy of the current lease. You're gonna need a certificate of insurance. You're gonna need a sample mortgage payment. And what I like to do with this is to streamline this process is set up a folder structure that is secure. There's a couple of different platforms out there, Dropbox, maybe even Google drive, but you know, in a secure folder online, I'll have my relevant documents in there.And then I can use sharing functionality to give it specifically to my lender or specifically to my CPA. That way I'm not needing to constantly track down these documents that I'm going to need again and again and again, and I can safely share it with whoever needs it. So the main takeaway for this system, I guess you can call it that is, you know, don't sleep on it, just have that document structure set up a do it once and do it right and do it early and then have that available for whenever you go through one of these maneuvers, be it refinancing or taking on a new loan or going through tax time.   Michael: It's so valuable. I know for my first property, I didn't have these systems really set up in place. I thought I did and then came tax time and I was like, Oh my God. So this is going to take so long to figure this out and go back and collect all these things. So, you know, it's one of those things. It's tough to know what you're looking for until you know what to look for. So ask somebody, ask, you know, ask your CPA, ask your tax professional. Hey, I'm investing in real estate. What things you're going to need from you at the end of the year, they're going to tell you, okay, we need your 1098. We're gonna need all your expenses, property tax, receipts, all these types of things. So that way you can start that ahead of time developing and building these good habits and systems. It makes it so much easier. Come tax time.   Emil: I don't have anything else that neither does my mustache. Good job guys. Excellent.   Tom: I actually thought of this while you were talking about it. So I love the concept of paying yourself first, right? And with paying yourself first, when you get your paycheck, it's pretty straight forward, right? You take the first 10%, 20%, whatever, and either save it or spend it. However, I like to think about this with your day. So paying yourself first, the first 10% of your day, how are you guys going to pay yourself first with the first 10% of your day? And you're not allowed to say surfing,   Emil: I'll go one level up then and just say exercising. I think exercising for me has become as equally as important for my mental wellbeing for the day as it is physical. So for me, that's how I pay myself first to start the day, right?   Tom: What are you doing for exercise?   Michael: Surfing!   Emil: I wish more surfing. Having a small child will put a dent in your surfing ability and it's summer, so the waves were a little slower. I will do. I'll either go for a run or I will do a combination of like pushups pull ups. Or I also use this thing called the seven minute workout app. It's literally a seven minute workout. I don't do long workouts. I don't like, I don't know. I used to spend more time working out, but for me, it's just a matter of like doing it almost daily to just start the day right. Whether it's seven minutes or 30 minutes.   Michael: Classic Emil fashion, he stole my answer. But that's why I went first because you're going to try to take that out. So not surfing, but I like to do kite surfing and I also work out. Do you exercise in the morning? I find that getting my blood pumping helps kind of burn off that haziness in the morning. But since the meal took that already, I really liked journaling in the morning. Just even for a few minutes, a few paragraphs, just kind of what I'm thinking about. What's going on personally in my life and what my goals are. I read that book think and grow rich. And that reaffirm that journaling is a super powerful tool. I've always known it, but again, it's one of those bad habits that it's hard to break into if you're not used to doing it. So starting slow and just trying to get my thoughts out on paper outside of myself, I find it to be helpful and worthwhile. What about you Tom?   Tom: So the first 10% of my day has gotten a lot earlier with a small child. So, you know, it's, it's now like the, you know, late five's early 6:00 AM is the first 10% of my day, but excellent partnership with my wife helping out. Well, she has the lion's share for sure, but on the extra early days, all right. I'm digressing. Okay. Going on a walk. So, I mean, I guess this is exercise. Sure. Why not? So getting the baby early morning, throwing him in a little jogger or the stroller walking around the street in the morning when like everything's still quiet and the sun's just creeping up over the Hills and the fog is kind of lifting journal in my head. I dunno. So like walking around in the early morning when nothing else is going on, I know that's a fine first 10% of the day way to pay yourself first.   Michael: As the only person without a baby, just a PSA, you know, you probably shouldn't throw babies into or at anything whether it be a jogger or cribs.   Tom: Oh, they're, they're pretty durable, but yeah, for sure,   Emil: They are very durable.   Pierre: Antifragile.   Emil: Antifragile.   Tom: Antifragile! Yes, they get stronger with it. Yeah. How about yourself Pierre? Your first 10% of the day?   Pierre: I like to save my working out for the end of the day so I can have a break between my work day and the evening. So the morning is a good time for me to read.   Emil: I used to read a lot in the morning, baby killed that.   Tom: Got anything good? Any good books going?   Pierre: I'm a little bit behind with the book club, but I'm reading the book that Michael chose for the RSA book club, Never Split the Difference.   Emil: Great book.   Pierre: And this morning I read the ebook that email sent me and the article on how to write better titles for the podcast.   Emil: Got to keep the audience clicking.   Michael: Yeah, that's great. Speaking of our audience, if anybody has any thoughts, suggestions, insights, hot topics they want to hear about. Please feel free to let us know at eshour@roofstock.com, malbaum@roofstoo.com, or tom@roofstock.com.   Emil: Or hit us up on Twitter. I'm @emilshour, Michael you're @albaummichael. and Tom you are.   Tom: I am not positive… I'm @tscnheido   Michael: Freaky deaky Tom   Tom: Yea, created like whatever, 15 years ago, something like that.   Emil: I like it.   Michael: Skater dude, 27 with an eight.   Tom: Exactly. Awesome guys. Well, thank you so much for listening today. To our episode, we hope that you got some value out of it. If you liked it, please don't be shy. Please rate us. Please subscribe as a meal set. And like Michael and Emil said, reach out to us. We love to hear your feedback on future content to do and to keep driving. So, alright, happy investing.   Emil: Happy, investing.   Michael: Happy investing.    

In this Episode Emil, Michael and Tom discuss the pros and cons of the HELOC, cash-out-refi, 1031 exchange and buy and sell strategies. --- Transcript:   Emil: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. My name is Emil Shour, and today I am joined by my lovely co-hosts Michael Albaum and Tom Schneider. And today we're going to be talking about how you can use trapped equity to actually help you scale your portfolio. So let's dive into this one.   Tom: Before we get into it, I want to give you a heads up on a promotion that we're running right now. So with Roofstock Academy, we have always benefits coaching on demand lectures, the tools, our SFR playbook, on and on, but the Roofstock marketplace credit's just got that much sweeter. So initially it was a $750 credit when you buy now it's a $2,500 credit. So you buy Roofstock Academy and for your next five transactions with no time limit, you're going to get $500 back at the close of your transaction.   Michael: That's right, Tom. Thanks so much for sharing. And for all of our listeners, we're actually giving out a hundred dollar off coupon for an enrollment into the Rootstock Academy. So go ahead and use JULY4 at checkout and that's JULY and the number 4, at check out for a hundred dollars off every sock Academy enrollment. And that coupon code is good through July 4th of 2020.   Tom: Take advantage of today. Happy investing. Awesome.   Emil: Thanks Tom. All right, guys. So we're going to be talking about how to tap into trap equity to help you scale your portfolio before we get into the different ways. Why do you guys even think this is an important topic for investors to know about?   Tom: This is gasoline to growing your portfolio? You know, buying a rental property is expensive, right? You know, it's not as expensive of buying an apartment complex, but once you start appreciating, having these properties appreciate and building equity, to being able to flip that appreciation into new rentals, honestly like that's really like a catalyst for growing your portfolio so much faster than needing to, you know, come up with all the new cash all at once.   Michael: Totally, totally agree, Tom, just to echo and piggyback off that if you're taking a hundred dollars a month cashflow, just for sake of discussion from a property that's 1200 bucks a year, that's several years of saving that cash flow before you're ready for your next down payment.So being able to tap into the appreciation side of things, which tends to grow a lot faster and appreciating markets than the cashflow does, can be a really great way to just leverage into additional rentals. Just like Tom said. So hopefully I added some value there and didn't just say the same thing in different words, but I totally agree.   Emil: It's funny because we're all I think in the same boat of we're all cashflow investors and we don't want to bank on appreciation, but when it does happen, there's all these benefits you can take advantage of to help you grow, right? Like most people probably think, Oh, I have to keep saving from my W2 or whatever you're doing to save up for properties. But there's actually a lot of different ways you can come up with the funds to keep acquiring new rental properties.   Michael: Absolutely. It can come from a number of different buckets.   Emil: Yep.   Tom: Something that's, similar to us three is where we're not necessarily need to use the returns we're making on our investment properties right now where I think we both think of it, of the cashflow reinvest that dividends into new properties, as well as the appreciation reinvest that appreciation is new properties. And today's episode is just about that ladder of return and how to actually actualize that to investing in new properties with the appreciation.   Emil: Yep. All right. So now let's get into the specifics of how you can actually tap into that trapped equity. And we're going to be highlighting four different strategies. You can use first one being HELOC or home equity line of credit. Second one is a cash out refinance. Third is a 10 31 exchange and the last one is selling a property and using those funds to buy a new property.   Michael: Yeah, absolutely Emil. So, a HELOC, like you said, as a home equity line of credit and it's something that I'm super excited about. It's something I've used a lot. It's a very, very powerful tool in the real estate arena. So basically what it is is it's a line of credit. Think of it like a credit card that gets established on the equity in your home. So if you've got a primary mortgage, call it a hundred thousand dollars and you've got a hundred thousand dollars of equity in the property, a lender might give you 80% or 70% of the equity in a line of credit, which means they might give you a 70,000 or an $80,000 line of credit. And what it is, it's basically just like I said, a credit card. And so you actually get a check book in the mail and if you need access to that $70,000, you can write yourself a check and you'll have $70,000 as soon as that check, clears your bank. So this can be really great. That can be used as a down payment that can be used to go buy a new car that can be used for home improvements. I definitely wouldn't recommend the car thing because that's a depreciating asset. It doesn't give you any kind of return on your money, but it's just a really, really, really flexible way to have access to quick cash. And then really nice thing about a HELOC is that you're only paying on the balance if it's outstanding. So let's say I set up this HELOC for $70,000 day one. I don't use any, I just have the line sitting there. There's a closing cost associated with setting that lineup, but it's usually pretty minimal, but so now I have access to that $70,000 and I can use it in any increment that I'd like. So let's say next week I want to buy a property. And $20,000 is my down payment. I'll write myself a self, a check for 20 grand close on that new property. Now I'm off to the races. And now let's say a month from now, I get a bonus for $20,000 at my job. And I decide that I want to pay back that line of credit. I can make a $20,000 payment back to the line of credit. And now my outstanding balance is zero, which means I have no monthly payments on that line of credit. The other nice thing about HELOCs is that they're typically interest only payments. So on that $20,000 example, I just gave that I had outstanding. I'd be making interest only payments, which as we all know are going to be significantly smaller than a fully amortized principle and interest payments, some important things to note about HELOCs and their interest only payments, typically they are going to be variable interest rates, which means they're going to fluctuate from month to month. So if I have a 5% interest rate this month, I might be at five and a half or six or 7% month next month. So we just need to be aware of that. But again, if we look at the math and just go back to our $20,000 example, the difference between a 5% interest rate and a 7% interest rate in terms of interest, only payments on a monthly basis is pretty negligible. So I, you know, when I first started using a HELOC and I'll get into it at the end, I thought, wow, the interest rate is 6%. That's crazy. I can go borrow money at 4%. Why would anyone use this, this HELOC thing at 6%? But again, as it comes back to the interest only payment, it's a so much, it's often a much more affordable and digestible payment amount to be allowing you to do things with that money that you might not ordinarily be able to do. So that was a super long winded answer. I know Tom thoughts, feedbacks opinion, additions?   Tom : Love a HELOC. It's like basically a bazooka in your back pocket. Like if you need to like a bunch of cash real quick, like let's say a great deal comes up and you're like cash of like actual, you know, liquid position is low. If you have an open HELOC, you can quickly tap into that and use it. Like for opportunistically, the rates that are available now are pretty incredible. I have one through right now from third federal. Yep. That's the name of it? And it is like hovering like mid two per two point somewhere in the middle. Holy smokes. I'm looking at my app right now and it's unreal and it's, you know, I jumped into it without knowing a little bit about it, but kind of just Guinea pig my way through and setting the line of credit up on my personal residence. And it's as wonderful as it sounds, but just having this huge cash, I'm using the capital right now, doing some improvements to the house that I live at, but what's, what's great is there is no HELOC police. You can use the funds to on whatever you want to use it on. You can use it for buying rental property. You can use it for buying a car. As Michael said, I think you said it was a good investment to get a car. Anyways. I don't remember.   Michael: Yeah a Lamborghini is the best.   Tom: Yeah, HELOC really powerful way to dip into your appreciation that you have. Something that I'm thinking about on the risk side is I don't, who knows what's going to happen with rates? I think into 2021, it could potentially go either way, but I don't want to leave. Myself on the hook for if there is a spike up, just because like Michael said, they are variable rates. I don't want to leave too big of a balance that I can't get out of, but it's a really great resource to have. If you're able to set one up.   Michael: Such a great point, talking about risk Tom. One thing that's really important to note is that a locked is actually a second position mortgage. And so if you've got an outstanding balance that you don't pay on your house or the property that the HELOC is established on could be foreclosed on via that he locked. Even if your primary mortgage or your first mortgage is up to date. So it's gotta be treated with respect. It's it's still a mortgage. It has all the ramifications of a mortgage. So just be aware of that, but they are such, such a flexible tool.   Emil: Nice job guys. You guys covered this one. Well, I have a couple questions for you as someone who's never done a HELOC, never used a HELOC, Michael, you mentioned there's some closing costs. How do those compare to a cash out refinance or just, you know, when you're regular, when you're getting financing, those closing costs, how do they compare to that?   Michael: Super, super minimal? I think I set up my line for like 500 bucks. It was the cost of the appraisal. And then like some miscellaneous minor fees. It was super, super cheap.   Tom: That's right. And on the appraisal, they didn't even send someone out to appraise the property.   Michael: Someone did a desktop appraisal.   Tom: I think they may have even waive that fee on that  one, the one that I did, but yeah, it's marginal costs.   Emil: Okay. I was going to ask you guys about appraisals as well. How do they do that? Do they send somebody out? Do they do desktop?   Michael: So depending on the size of the property, they might send somebody out. But yeah, for mine, it was just as on a single family home.   Emil: Got it.   Tom: Another piece about HELOCs is, as Michael said, you know, it's a delta between the value of the home and the, your first mortgage, different companies. That issue HELOCs may have a different percentage that they go up to, to the value. So the one that I'm in right now, it's the balance of my mortgage, excuse me, 80% of the value of my home that the appraiser comes up with minus the balance of my mortgage. So the point that I'm making is for this particular lender, it's 80%, but I've seen HELOC companies, I believe the San Francisco Fireman's credit union or something, they go up to 90%. Don't quote me on that. But there are some HELOCs that go up to 90% of the value of the home, which, you know, if you're trying to build a, a big arsenal of having HELOC funds, going up to 90% of the value is pretty, pretty incredible. But this was a while ago when I looked at this. So I'm not sure if it's still available, but the point is it's not a one size fits all. Just like mortgages are not one size fits all.   Emil: Nice, good job guys. Well covered. Alright. So any, anything else before we move on to cash out, refinance?   Tom: Might as well do it, go get a HELOC   Michael: Yeah, I was gonna say one last point is it's one of those things that there is very little consequence to doing it and not using it. So I would so much rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. And so for the $500 expense, I mean, these typically have a five to 10 year drought period. So they'll reevaluate in five or 10 years. If they still want to grant you this line, if you don't use it for five years, okay. Not a big deal. It cost you 500 bucks, but if you do use it, you are going to be so, so, so thankful. I promise you that you establish your future self will thank your past self for having set this up on a property, especially when values seem to be quite high at this moment in time, kind of throughout the markets.   Tom: I'll come in with one last question. Michael, do you have. On your rental property? Cause I know a lot of lenders don't like doing HELOCs on rental properties,   Tom: Like I have it on my personal house. What I'd love to, for you to riff on that real quick.   Michael: Yeah. I've got it on a rental property that I own free and clear. So it was much easier to do because most lenders don't like to come in and a second position lien. Uh, so if you have a free and clear property, you have a primary with some equity in it. Those can both be really great candidates for, although I was talking with a student within the Academy and they were saying that they found a headlock provider that would come in and second position behind a mortgage company on an investment property. So those, you know, everything exists under the sun. So you've just got to go out and find it.   Emil: I don't know if you guys answered this or mentioned it, what's the period on a HELOC usually when is that payment due? Is it five years, 10 years down the road.   Michael: So typically it's it's between five and 10 years, depending on what the HELOC stipulates, but it's, again, it's an interest only payment. And so if you're paying it back slowly over 10 years, and then you still have a balance, usually it'll just convert to a standard mortgage at that point, whatever interest rate is, and that all be stipulated by the lender specifically.   Emil: Got it. Okay. Thanks for clarifying. All right. Let's move on to the cash out refinance now. So basically a cash out refinance replaces your current home loan with a new mortgage that's higher than your outstanding loan balance. And what you're doing is that difference. You're pulling that back out as cash. And what's awesome about this. Just like the HELOC is that this is money you're getting and it's not taxed your, your home appreciates. You're redoing the loan and taking out that difference. And it's untaxed, which is really, really nice as an investor.   Michael: Can you give us some like math, some, some number of breakdowns in meal about what that might look like for an investor?   Emil: Yeah. So let's say you let's make it simple. You purchase a property at a hundred thousand dollars and you put 20% down. So you have a outstanding loan of 80,000, your home appreciates to 150,000. So your equity has gone up 50K. So now you basically redo the loan at an 80%. Some lenders only can go up to 75% loan to value. So you're making, what is that? What does that difference? The 50 K times 75%, Michael's doing the math 112. Okay. So your original loan was 80 and now your new loan is for 112. So the difference is $32,000. So minus some closing costs, let's call it 3000 bucks. You're able to pull out around $29,000 in your cash out refinance. And now your new mortgage is for 112,000 instead of that original 80,000. So some of the things to be conscious of here, you might, let's say you, your home appreciates like the example we just gave. And before you had a cash flowing property, you may, you want to be careful to not over leverage yourself. So now you have a property that's not cash flowing. Maybe you were making a hundred, $150 of cashflow a month before with very conservative estimates. Now your new loan you're basically breaking even each month or maybe even paying into the property. So that's when I think of some of the cons with a cash out refinance, I think some people may over leverage themselves to get that extra cash, create, turn a cash flowing property into one that's negative cash flow.   Tom: An alligator   Emil: An alligator as our friend Michael Zuber a likes to call it.   Michael: So I've, I've got an opinion on this. And so I always say, especially within the Academy with a lot of people I coach consult with that, we have to look at cash out refi is as really a two step process. Step one is getting the cash. And step two is what are you doing with that cash? Because if we can go then buy a second property that will yield us $250 in cashflow a month, as opposed to are just single at one 50, as long as our cumulative sum is greater than its parts. I think that's a good move. Even if I have to have a negative cash flowing property in order to obtain a better one, I'm willing to do that. Tom, what do you think? Whose side are you on?   Tom: It really depends on what your situation is. If you are not needing the cash flow. Now, you know the scale I would advise if you build your portfolio, there's a lot of value in that. As long as you're cognizant of your LTV as a whole, cause you know, with doing a cash out refi, your loan to value is going to go up. So being conservative with that, but if you have the opportunity to scale your portfolio and you don't need the cashflow now, I think you're going to have two lines in the pond with multiple properties of doing that cash out refi and buying another unit with that would be what I would recommend. Does that answer it?   Michael: Yeah, totally. You're on team Michael. That's awesome. Team michael for the win.   Emil: You guys are being silly, don't have negative cash flow on properties. Come on, rule number 1.   Michael: But if your cumulative cashflow is now greater than your single positive cashflow, does that carry any water for you?   Emil: Okay. In our example, what do we pull out? Like 30 K you'd have to use that 30 K as a new down-payment.   Michael: Correct.   Emil: Let's say your, your old property was cashflowing a hundred bucks and now it's at zero. So your 30 K would have to go find a new property. That's going to cashflow. I mean, yeah, at least a hundred bucks, 150 to make it worth it.   Michael: I would argue that it would need, yeah, we need to need to cash flow significantly more than what you were previously making because you could have done nothing and ended up with the same cashflow. So I need, in my opinion, should cash out at least 200. Yeah.   Emil: I mean, it sounds good on paper. Is that possible? Can you take that and go steamroll into more cashflow?   Michael: Watch me, challenge accepted. No, I have, of course I think the numbers have to work and we're, we're just using examples numbers for the sake of discussion to illustrate a point. But I guess the point that that I would take is that if I'm comfortable and again, like Tom said, it's a very personal decision and you've got to evaluate everyone at their own specific point in life and what their, what their properties look like and what their business looks like. But I'm comfortable killing the cashflow on property a to have a increased cashflow on property B that is cumulatively greater than just a alone.   Emil: Yeah. You're more of a risk taker than me. I'm a little more conservative, but to each their own.   Michael: To each his own!   Emil: All right. Cool. Anything else on cash out refinance we should cover. When do you guys think the cash out refinance is better than the HELOC and vice versa?   Tom: Well, the nice thing about the cash out refinance is if rates, as they are now are at a very low number. When you do a cash out refinance, you're going to lock that rate in for 30 years or, or whatever the terms are versus the HELOC. You know, you're still on the rollercoaster on where rates are going. So for me right now, just basically cash out refi the majority of my portfolio to tap into these super low rates that we have. So thinking longterm, looking at the rate.   Michael: I totally agree. I think it all comes back down to what your plan or what the individual's plan is for that cash. If they know that they're going to be buying something in the next three to six months, you know, cash out refi could be a great way to go if they don't know what they're going to do with the cash, but they know that they want cash, HELOC can be a great way to go because you're not paying on that cash to just sit in your bank account, like you are with it with a cash out refi. So, and there's nothing to say that you can't do a hybrid approach, take a little bit of cash out and also set up a HELOC for that remaining equity balance. That can be a really, really great way to go and a really powerful tool. It's something else that just keep in mind is that your rate is going to change from your original mortgage when you do a cash out refi. So you're basically wiping that first mortgage clean and getting a brand new, totally new mortgage. So whatever the rates in terms are of that new one, that's what you've got to come to terms with. And then the last thing to think about is I've heard this said from a number of different people, is that if you're a, towards the end of your mortgage, when go do a refinance that resets the clock back to year one on a 30 year payback for a single family home conventional mortgage. So if you're at the end of your mortgage cycle, you're paying this significant balance towards the principal. You are just gobbling away at that principal balance, which is really, really nice. Versus if you resetting the clock. Now we're paying the vast majority of that payment is going to the interest. So the balance is going to be decreasing at a slower rate than if we're towards the end of our, of the life of our mortgage. So again, just something to consider, to keep in mind, to be cognizant of, as you're looking at considering doing our cash out refi,   Tom: Great point. Hybrid, and it's not a one size fits all you can, if you could use both, have both guns and missiles.But that example, I would say that the HELOC would be the gun and the cashout refi would be the missile, like the kind of a bigger, you know, locked in.   Michael: I thought that HELOC was the bazooka man. Now you're changing it up   Emil: So destructive today Tom.   Michael: Someone played command and conquer as a kid.   Tom: Too much coffee.   Emil: Man, you guys are making my job easy. Like I don't have anything to add on top of like your final notes. Cool. Let's let's move on to the next one, 1031 exchange. Tom, you want to take the lead on this one?   Tom: Yeah. So we'll hit this one pretty quickly. We had an episode earlier episode, I think four or five somewhere in there. Anyway. So at 1031 exchange is deferral. So it is selling a property, not paying any taxes on the proceeds from that sale and rolling all of those proceeds into buying a new property. So with a 1031, there are some rules that you need to adhere to. And a high level example of those rules is you need to identify properties within a specific period. There is rules around the value that you're selling to what you can buy. And we recommend talking to a 10 31 professional company to understand those rules, but the big shtick for a 10 31 exchange is you're selling your property. You're making a bunch of money and you're not paying any taxes on those. You're deferring those now eventually when you do sell and do not use the proceeds to buy another property, which we'll talk about.   Michael: The thing that you're getting at Tom, is that you can continue rolling that deferment via 1031 exchanging every property that you then buy and then subsequently sell. So if you sell property via 10 31 exchange to buy property B, when you're ready to sell property, be 10 31, exchange that into property C and so on and so forth, such that you're deferring, deferring, deferring your capital gains tax until the point at which you might not be around anymore. And then whoever you leave that building to gets a step up in basis. And that basically wipes away the capital gains tax that they would have to pay. So, yeah, echoing what you said, go talk to a 1031 professional before attempting this go to the episode that we did on 1031 exchanges, it's really, really informative, but it's a really, really great way to sell properties and not have to worry about paying the capital gains tax.   Emil: Yeah. And I looked it up. It was episode 15 was a 1031 episode.   Tom: Awesome, reasons that you would want to do a 10 31 is perhaps you're moving your portfolio, moving geographies. Perhaps you're changing to more of an appreciation asset to more of a cash flowing assets. Perhaps you want to take one property and use the proceeds to buy multiple properties or the other way around. There's so many different use cases for doing a 1031 exchange and the mechanics of it, of deferring the tax payment are available for all of them.   Emil: Yeah.   Michael: So what would be a con, why wouldn't you want to do it today?   Tom: You wouldn't want to do a 1031. I mean, you're, you're selling the property. So if it's an asset that you like, like, you know, you are changing assets, you know what other ones cons are?   Emil: Oh, the, the timeline you have, right? So sometimes I think it's like a 45 day or 60 day timeline to identify the next property that you're going to re 1031 into. And so sometimes I think you could feel like it's forcing your hand into maybe a so so deal versus something where you wait, you know, maybe you pay the capital gains on it, but you finding a better property cause you, you're not restricted to this short time window.   Michael: Mhm   Tom: Other con I would put is versus those initial two with the HELOC and the cash out refinance, you have a very good idea on how much money you're going to have available from that maneuver. But with a 1031 exchange, you're selling the property. So there are just a lot more variables on what you're going to get when you for when you sell the property versus like knowing what the, what the rates are and whatnot with a, with a HELOC and a cash out refi.   Michael: Yep. And one additional point to add on top of that time, I always seem to be picking piggybacking off you cause you've got such great points. Is your back tired yet from carrying me?   Tom: I'll call you Jansport. Go ahead   Michael: Is, you know, in the first that we talked about, we're tapping into the equity and now have a usable cash. In addition to still controlling the asset. When we go to sell as with the 10 31 and selling a property straight up as we're going to talk on in a minute, we now no longer own the asset. And in the example of a 1031, we don't have the cash because we need to use all of that cash to buy a new property. Now, of course, if we don't use all the cash, that's called boot and that can be taxed at capital gains rate, whatever. But if the idea is to pay as little capital gains possible, we want to be using all of that gain into a new property. There's going to be nothing left over for us and usable cash.   Emil: Talk about boot a little bit. You mentioned it briefly. Michael, do you know that? I think it's the boot is, let's say you sold your property at 200,000. You go and find another property for 150 K you still have $50,000 that isn't used in the 1031 exchange. And so if you don't use that within your 1031 timeline, you're still taxed on that $50,000 capital gain or whatever.   Michael: Exactly whatever that Delta is, whatever is not used up is leftover and that's called boot,   Tom: Yeah. And that's a con example, you know, you're, you're fitting a little bit more of a piece of a puzzle and you can't fit it just right. You're going to have some taxes. Sorry Emil, go ahead.   Emil: All right. Michael, do you want to close us out on selling a property straight up without a 1031 exchange?   Michael: Yeah. So last and final way to tap into the trapped equity is just sell a property straight up. So instead of doing a HELOC or a cash out refi or temporary one, just sell the property. If you bought it for a hundred, now you can sell it for 120, sell it for 120. You'll walk away with 20 K and you'll have to pay uncle Sam, the capital gains on that. And depending on what your personal financial situation looks like, that's going to dictate what that game might look like. So if we call it a cool and easy 25%, you'll walk away with 15 grand in your pocket, not a bad payday at the end of the day. So I think a lot of people get hung up in, Oh, I've got to do 10 31. So I've got to do cash. Every fire, I've got to do a HELOC. If you just need the cash quick and you just want to be done with the property, for whatever reason, you just want the cash, you don't want to have to worry about it. Just sell the property. It can be a really, really great option. And again, depending on your personal financial situation, that's going to dictate how much tax you may or may not have to pay on that gain. So Emil, do you have any pros cons to this type of thing? Okay.   Emil: Yeah. So I have a personal example of this recently. So I bought a property about two years ago and recently decided to sell it, ended up selling it for the same price I bought it for, for me. So I didn't have to worry about a 1031. I didn't have any capital gains to worry about. I basically ended up a little bit below break even. I lost $1,200 you factor in cashflow and selling and all that stuff. But for me, I wanted, I wanted this down payment back, right. I put 25% down on this property. I wanted my down payment back to be able to go use it on something better that that property was okay. Cashflow property, but I'm pursuing a little bit different of a strategy right now. And there's, again, there's all these different ways you can tap into money. This, this property hadn't appreciated. So cash out refi hayloft weren't really options for me, but I wanted to get a nice chunk of cash right now. And so I just decided to sell this property at basically no gain. So this is something I used recently.   Michael: So that's a massive pro. Okay.   Emil: Right, exactly.   Tom: I like that example because you know, you got you, you dipped your toe and you know, maybe it wasn't like the property you wanted, but I think that the takeaway that I hear from it is, you know, when you do these maneuvers and nothing is locked in stone and you know, these are all, some excellent tools that you have in your back when you are investing in real estate. And there is some appreciation, some extra equity, but ultimately, you know, doing, you have a lot more options within this type of investment and to have these options available, you got to get in, you know? Yeah,   Michael: Absolutely. And Emil is something too that I don't think we touched on yet is, is the tax advantages that you've had for the last two years as a result of owning that property. So if we looked at the total total, total return factoring in loan, pay down appreciation, tax benefits, all this kind of thing, my guess is you're, you're gonna end, you're still gonna end up in net positive. So even though you didn't see any true dollars gained in your pocket, if we turn the clock back and look, two years in reverse, you probably did better on this than you would have had otherwise.   Emil: Right. And, and to echo Tom's point, it's a learning experience. I didn't lose that much. Right? Like obviously there's an opportunity cost of that money making money over the last two years versus losing. But I think that's part of it, right? I think a lot of real estate investors only talk about the big wins and sometimes it's not always rosy, there are some things that happen that were isn't what you expected. But the important thing is you learn something from each, each maneuver each step   Michael: Nicely said, Tom, do you have any good examples of any instances where you've maybe used one or multiple of these strategies to grab some tap equity, some trapped equity?   Tom: Yep. So HELOC on my personal house, have that line of credit, uh, did a cash out refinance. It was two years ago on some properties and actually going through a couple of them right now getting a lot of dry powder available if using a lot of, yeah. Of a weapon analogies,   Michael: A lot of pirate puns today,   Tom: A lot of pirate puns, dry powder anyway, and then did a 1031, a couple of years ago, getting out of a specific geography or I guess a better way to say it is concentrating into a different market than that current, that property was in. And just like we were talking about earlier in doing these exercises, you get experience and kind of understand them that much better   Michael: Love that.   Emil: How about you, Michael? Any stories you want to call out on using these strategies?   Michael: Yeah, sure. So I bought a property, all cash awhile back and then day one cash out refi, 80% of the sale price, which the lender was gracious enough to give me and then basically took all of that cash and put it into the rehabbing of that property. And now that property is worth a whole lot more. And so I intend to go cash out refi again. Now at the higher value after the rehabs all said and done, everything's leased up. So some important things to think about are the refinance costs that I incurred now twice. Thankfully the lender that I work with, the refinance costs, it's the same lender I use for my, HELOC their refinance costs are pretty minimal. So it's not a big deal as far as the costs are concerned, but it's a really great way recycle that cash and only needing to have that initial chunk of change to buy the property, all cash. Obviously we have to make sure that the rehab costs aren't going to exceed the, the 80% refinance of the initial purchase, but that's a really, really, really great tool that I like to use a really great strategy is buying all cash, turning around, refinancing, getting that cash out and then go, go doing it again somewhere else. So then again, I've already spoken about the HELOC I've used. So using those two things in conjunction has been a really, really great way for me to be able to scale pretty rapidly and take advantage of some killer deals that have popped up on the radar over, over the last couple of years.   Tom: So one more thing I'll add real quick is knowing what your loan to value is. Um, that's just really important with any of these tools. You want to just make sure that you have an appropriate balance between the total mortgages or HELOC value or whatever out on the property versus the value of the property. And I think, you know, at a minimum, you know, 75%, 80% loan devalue, more conservatively, you can get down to 60%. Well, I'd love to hear what you guys think is an appropriate loan to value ratio.   Emil: I'm probably personally pushing it to like the 75 80% cause I'm in growth mode right now. I think later on at some point, just for peace of mind, it's going to switch to, okay, how do I increase my equity on these properties? Maybe sell properties to own certain other properties free and clear, but right now it's kind of just grow. And then I think it will be switching to how do we make this more efficient.   Michael: Yeah, anytime I get this question, I think of that song, push it to the limit, push it to them. Cause I totally echoing Emil. I levered up as much as I could when I was in growth mode. And I've talked about this in other episodes. Now I'm looking to really streamline and become super, super lean, super efficient and reduce my loan to value and just being able to do more with less. I also think that depending on the deal itself, I mean, if the, if the value isn't there, but you've got a high loan because it just, the property isn't super valuable, but it cashflows really well. So your debt service coverage ratio, the amount of income that you're bringing in compared to the debt on the property is, is really powerful. Then I'm more okay with that. You know, if I've got the cashflow to cover the debt, even though it might be a very high debt ratio, I'm, I'm comfortable with that. And so everybody's got to reconcile that for themselves and determine what their risk appetite looks like and how comfortable they are with the values that they're working with. But no, I like him he'll have, have levered up as much as I possibly can. What about you, Tom?   Tom: Yeah. Growth, growth mode. I mean, debt is cheap right now. So keeping it at, you know, 70% I think is a number that I keep in a keep in the back of my head, and not getting, getting beyond that. Cause once you start getting involved that you risk where if there is like a downturn in the, in the market, getting under water where the value of the loan is greater than the cost of the house, I think it's pretty unlikely, but that's how a lot of people got in trouble in that 2008 crisis is the value of the loans greatly exceeded the value of the houses. And that's not a position that you want to get in. So that's why you want to build that buffer. It's kind of, it's similar to the alligator expression, a property that cashflow is negative. The version of that for value is a property that's underwater. So the worst animal in the real estate investing zoo is the underwater alligator.   Emil: Yes. Don't be an underwater alligator finishing strong.   Michael: Yeah.   Emil: I have a question for you guys. Let's say you have a rental property and does go underwater, right? As long as you have a tenant, who's covering rent, your mortgage, all that stuff. Does it matter? Like as you know, real estate goes in, cycles goes up and down. Let's say you temporarily go underwater, but you're still cash flowing. You're still able to pay everything off. Do you guys think that matters?   Tom: It really depends on your situation. Like if you are an ultra growth mode and you are not at risk of not servicing your debt payments, even if you do have a vacancy or something, I think that's fine, but it's pretty situational. So if you have good other sources of income to be able to cover those shortcomings, I think that's fine, but you need to have a, an end game plan as well as some contingencies, if things go sideways, which sometimes they do.   Michael: Yeah. You know, it's a great question Emil one that comes up a lot within the Academy. And it's something that I don't pay a whole lot of attention to as far as the value, because I agree that it doesn't really matter. Nothing about that. Snapshot in time has changed. If you have a rental renter paying the rent, your income has not changed. It's totally independent of the value. So as long as you don't need to do anything with that property, either sell it or refinance it or try to get a heat lock on it. It has no impact on the financial picture. In that snapshot of time, of course it'll affect your net worth and all that kind of a thing. But again, it doesn't affect the property's performance. And it's kind of like a stock. If a stock has gone down in value, we don't automatically say, okay, we now we're going to sell it. It's an unrealized gain or loss until we do something with it. Buy, sell refinance.   Emil: Yeah. Yeah. I think the same thing I think about it a lot, I guess it's just the unknown of will you need to sell for some unknown life events, right? And then it's, you're putting yourself at risk in that way.   Michael: Exactly. Exactly. But that gets into the bigger discussion of having reserves and not, not ever being in that position because you never want to have to fire sale something.   Emil: Sure. Cool. I always think about that one. I was curious to get your guys' thoughts on it too.   Michael: What's your guys's spirit animal and the real estate investing zoo?   Tom: An Eagle. No.   Michael: Why?   Tom: Agile. Peregrine. Falcon. Fastest animal. Next question.   Michael: Yeah, but you're at the zoo. So you've got your wings clipped. Same answer?   Tom: I'd fix them. I'm like a lizard.   Michael: Grow new wigs that are better faster stronger. Emil, what's your real estate spirit animal?   Emil: Oh man. My monkey swinging from property to property. I don't know, man.   Michael: That's a good one. Eating bananas the whole time, right?   Emil: Exactly. Yourself. Michael?   Michael: I'm a duck man. I said it before. I'll say it again. I'm floating. Looking calm on the surface underwater. I'm paddling hardest.   Emil: Well, thank you as always everybody for tuning into this episode, make sure you go and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, you get new episodes. And if you enjoy the show, please leave us a review. We want to know what you think and we'll catch you on the next episode. Happy investing.   Michael: Happy investing   Tom: Happy investing  

In this Episode, Tom, Michael and Emil talk about the element of luck in real estate investing and how to put in the work to be ready to move when opportunity arises.  --- Transcript: Tom: Greetings and welcome to the remote real estate investor. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about the concept of chance luck. It goes by many names. And how does it apply to real estate investing? How can you tip the scales in your favor and what are the hosts thoughts on the different aspects of luck? All right, let's do it.   Tom: All right, guys. So today's episode, as we alluded to in the intro, we're going to be talking about the elements of luck and how it applies to real estate investing. And before we get into any specific, I'd love to hear from both you guys, a meal and Michael, are you guys lucky? What are your thoughts on luck and real estate investing at a high level and lucky that's, you know, I ask that questions in your life. And it's a interview question that a lot of companies use where they ask if an applicant is lucky and they take luck, which I think might be a theme, at least for me, in this episode of, by putting a lot of little things in your favor, it can generate luck in your favor. So anyways, Michael, you go first, go ahead and spiels your kind of thoughts on luck.   Michael: And yeah, so, you know, I thought for a long time that I was a very lucky person, things kind of seemed to go well for me overall. And then I think it was my dad who first told me that luck is just preparation, meeting opportunity. And I wholeheartedly believe in that. I think that people who are lucky or who appear lucky from the outside are probably doing a lot of things that go unnoticed. And an  analogy is like a duck treading water on the surface of like super calm. But underneath there is so much going on and the surface wouldn't look the way it did, if what was going on beneath the surface wasn't happening. So I do consider myself a lucky person, but I also think that I spend a ton of time, energy and effort preparing for the opportunities that I seem to encounter.   Tom: I love the visual, the visual just got me.   Michael: Yeah Emil, what about you?   Emil: Michael, you're such an optimist. Every time I talk to you, I'm like, I need to be more like Michael and just be just super optimistic. I'm kind of, it depends on the day you ask me, I was chatting with somebody the other day and it feels like the moments you're unlucky things just pile on, right? You have a tenant issue or things that feel like headaches and make you feel unlucky. A lot of times in real estate investing for whatever reason it is, they pile on top of each other at the same time. And then you have these mud like months go by and you're seeing your property value go up. You haven't had any tenant issues, no big maintenance costs. And you're like, man, I'm so lucky. I'm collecting passive income, not doing anything. So for me, I'm kinda, there's times where I feel super lucky and times where I feel unlucky. So I don't know.       Tom: I like that for you.   Emil: Straight answer for you.   Tom: It comes in bunches.   Michael: Yeah. When it rains, it pours. Yeah. Who's got any more platitudes to pile on.   Emil: We're getting real basic on this episode.   Michael: What about you Tom? Do you consider yourself lucky?   Tom: Yeah. I consider myself a lucky person. For sure. I think it's similar to, like you were saying, Michael it's where preparation meets opportunity. There definitely are things outside of your control where no matter what you do, like things can go up or things can go down. But as a whole, I'd say the arc tends to go towards, you know, taking care of the little things and all that stuff adds up or not taking care of the little things and all that stuff adds up and tends to bend towards whatever. I don't know how you would put it either your work ethic or just taking care of knowing where to put the work in is really important. So I, you know, yes, there is definitely some elements of chance and luck that are real, but generally speaking, I think a lot of times people create their own luck. So how I want to apply this to remote real estate investing is I've broken down categories where I think chance exists and we're going to go through all of them and talk about them. The ways that we can tip the scale in our favor and the categories I have selected. And you guys, we can add some other ones, but we're going to jump into each one is property value. So appreciation kind of like neighborhood related stuff, the tenant. So either evictions or renewing leases or the rent going up, the property condition, repairs and maintenance and acquisitions, those are going to be our four key categories. And we're just going to spend time in each category, knocking them down and onto the next one. So it makes sense, guys, let's do it. Let's do it. Alright. Property value, Emil. Why don't you lead us on this one? So let's talk about the different aspects of luck in property value.   Emil: So for me, the big one here, the luck part of it is choosing an area that appreciates, well, I think it's probably two things choosing a market that appreciates well and choosing an area within that market that seems to be appreciating is more desirable than the other parts of town. Those I would say are probably the two luck aspects. Do you guys have anything else to add on property value?   Tom: Yeah, I'd say there's, you know, with property value, a way to get above the fold of the luck is just looking at all those variables that go into appreciation and there are several of them. So crime population growth, different major economic centers. So I mean, my thought with property value is, you know, it's not throwing a dart at a board, there's doing your homework and looking at some of those key contributing factors to appreciation. You can get ahead of the curve with that.   Emil: So I have some examples of good luck and bad luck I'm gonna lead with the bad luck story. So a property I bought about two years ago out in Memphis, bought it for around 63,500 has a one, a half or two star neighborhood rating on Roofstock. I ended up holding it for about two years, decent cash flowing property, but I ended up just selling it last month, took me a couple months to sell it. And I ended up selling it for basically what I paid for. So even after two years, the market's been great across the country, took me several months to sell it and it didn't appreciate at all. And we had just made some repairs to the property. So that was an instance where I probably bought, I lean too hard on cashflow, right. And bought in a one and a half star neighborhood, so lower quality neighborhood and the property, it didn't end up appreciating as much as some of the properties I have in other markets where the neighborhood is just better and the market better as well. One of the other things I probably could have accounted for is Memphis. I learned this later, Memphis has a lot of great cash flowing properties, but there's a lot of rental properties. And it's just one of those markets that you're not going to see a lot of appreciation here. So my goal wasn't when I bought this, I didn't think I'd be selling it two years down the road and my goal wasn't appreciation. But…   Michael: Did you anticipate to see some appreciation from the property in addition to cashflow?   Emil: I mean, I think we all do, right. I think we're all cashflow and we've talked about what do we want cashflow or appreciation? We're all cashflow investors, but you start to realize that appreciation is really an amazing cherry on top. And it allows like if you hold for a small period of time, your property appreciates, you can just steam roll that, snowball that into another property. That's maybe bringing you more cashflow. So it's, I've realized it's a little shortsighted to just think about cashflow.   Tom: I think that's a good example. You know, in thinking about appreciation is it's in property value. It's luck if you close your eyes and just kind of throw a dart at the board, but if you're proactive in evaluating, what are the different underpinnings that make for appreciation, it becomes less of a luck thing. Right? So talk about an example where you would say you were lucky with appreciation and how maybe it wasn't so much luck looking at it in hindsight.   Michael: So my very first property I bought in Southern California, I had no idea what I was doing. And we talked about it in a prior episode, or we talk about our first deals. And so I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew the market a little bit just anecdotally, because I had spent time there as a kid. So I thought of my first investment, I'll just buy into their California, great, whatever I bought that house. And it's since appreciated North of a hundred thousand dollars since I've owned it, which is super, super exciting. And that was dumb luck, some would say, but that was also a little bit, a little bit of preparation meeting opportunity. And in hindsight, looking at that market, it has, it would be a five star neighborhood if was on Roofstock, the schools are all 10, 10 tens. It constantly gets rated amongst some of the best schools in the state. And it's in a small HOA association. So the neighborhood around it is maintained really well because everybody is subject to the same HOA rules, looking at that whole picture. It's obvious that that house is likely to appreciate, but I didn't have the whole picture going into it because I didn't know to look and zoom out at all these things. I just thought, Oh, here's a neighborhood that I know, and here's a house that I can afford. So I think that's a kind of prime example of luck mixed with a little bit of preparation.   Tom: I like that story in that, you know, in going through it, you were fortunate to be in that neighborhood and just to buy it, but over time it seems like that would, I think that the big arc of the story is what started as a luck thing, turned into less of a luck thing, as you have learned more about the different elements that go into appreciation like your school scores.   Michael: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I know for me that I'm able to then convert that luck into now more of a science, because I understand what's going into that. As you say, what's going into the sausage making right understand at school scores play a role that neighborhood's scores play a role that physical property attributes play a role. So those all things have been a tip in my favor and this one particular example. But now that I understand that I can go take those lessons learned and make the process repeatable in any other market.   Tom: That's great. I'm going to go ahead and flip us to the next category of tenant. And what I mean by this is vacancy is, you know, touching into evictions a little bit. And I would say that at a high level, a lucky situation with a tenant is a tenant that never moves out that always pays rent on time. That is always renewing right? Continuing the lease to keep vacancy down. And I think there is a lot of things you can do upfront to tip these scales in your favor. And I think thinking about either buying occupied or vacant, there's different things that you can do to help you out here.   Michael: Tom, what would you say are some of those things?   Tom: So let's talk about an occupied property first. So if I buy a property that is occupied and the next day I find out that the tenant is an eviction and wants to leave and whatnot. I know now knowing what I know there are some things I could have done to put the odds in my favor that that wouldn't be an issue. So you could say I'm on, I'm unlucky. Some of the things that I could do with a property that has occupied is no. What was the screening criteria for that tenant, with the seller? So was there a debt to income ratio? How was that tenant vetted before the seller brought them in? Did they talk to previous landlords? If I go into buying an occupied property without knowing some of this stuff? I think then yeah, this is definitely you're rolling the dice and getting lucky, but as an investor who wants to push the luck in their favor, getting to know what is that criteria of the occupied owner I think is really important.   Emil: I have a couple of things we can add here in terms of tipping luck in your favor. So you can find a lot of us lean on property managers to handle finding tenants, dealing with tenants. So there's some property managers who put some skin in the game when it comes to tenants, they'll do things like if the tenant requires an eviction, they will handle replacing the tenant for free. So usually most property managers charge you a new lease fee like half of a first month's rent or full month's rent. And some of them will just waive that and find you a new tenant. And they won't also take their management fee from that first month to replace them. So I think one thing you can do to tip the scales in your favor is make sure your PM has some type of skin in the game when it comes to tenant quality. So that's something I've learned over time. And I like property managers who offer that another one I'll quickly mention is it kinda has to do with the tenant it's every year lease will come up for renewal. And a lot of times people will just always want to go and get the market rate. And so I talked about an example today on Twitter, and I'll just kind of read off what it was. So let's say you want to increase your rent from a thousand dollars to 1,050, and you're not willing to be flexible. And the tenant decides to leave. So let's say you have to pay $1,500 to get the place rent ready, and you lose a month of rent finding a new tenant. So $2,500 you have to make up. Now, if you're generous and assume you'll be able to get $1,100 per month from the new tenant, that's a hundred dollars more than you were bringing in before. Right? So stick with me. I'm gonna try to bring all this together. So it'll take you 25 months to make up that $2,500 difference, right? So $1,500 for making it rent ready. And the thousand dollars of one month of lost rent. So 2,500 divided by a hundred, you have 25, takes you 25 months, more than two years to make up that small increase in rent. So another thing you can do to tip things in your favor is having some type of flexibility in making sure you don't lose tenants, right? Don't just say I'm a hundred dollars under market rent. I'm going to get 50 to $100 more per month. And if they leave, they leave, it's actually theirs. When you do the math, it's better to be a little bit under marketing. Keep that tenant in for longer. At least for me.   Tom: What I love about that example, Emil is, another element of luck is, you could say at the end of the year, you're looking at your cashflow and you're like, Oh, I was, you know, up X amount or down X amount by that exercise that you just went through in calculating out the difference of what your return would be on driving up market rent and maybe dealing with vacancy or, you know, well maybe a less market rent growth. You're being super proactive at what those end of the year cash flow is. And having that information as a tool in your arsenal when going to the table with the tenant on what the rent renewal is. So I think that's a great idea of at the end of the day, this is maximizing your cashflow. And you're doing that by being data driven and looking at the numbers on making that type of decision. So another great example,   Michael: related to that point a meal, I think that not enough people talk to their tenants and whether that's themselves personally, or through their property manager. And so when a tenant moves out, owners are often like, Oh, bummer, the tenant moved out. Now have to go through that exercise. And Neil just mentioned of turning the unit and getting the market rent if they so desire. But there's so much that you can do proactively before that tenant moves out by asking them questions, Hey, what would you like to see done to the property? Are there things that I could do as an owner or the manager can ask on your behalf to do to the property, to incentivize them to stay? And so that's really, again, some opportunity and some preparation that are meeting. And so if someone has a tenure tenant, someone might look at them and say, Oh, they're so lucky. They haven't had a vacancy in 10 years. Well, really that owner might've been talking to that tenant the whole time.   Emil: That's a great example. I like that a lot.   Tom: Be the duck legs, the duck legs,   Michael: Swim, swim stroke stroke.   Tom: The last thing I'll say on tenant before we move on to property condition and RNM is it puts yourself in the position of a tenant. So instead of just sort of blindly looking at an address and a bed count, bath count, do the Google street view, is this property on a thoroughfare? Is it going to be a place that you would want to live? I love the golden rule of putting yourself on the other side of the tenant and saying like, Oh, is this some place I'd want to live at? And one of our new and all that good stuff. And if it checks those boxes, chances are you're going to probably going to be luckier and have tenants that stay longer and renew longer and all of that good stuff. All right. Let's jump into property conditions. So this is about RNM. How can you be lucky when it comes to repairs and maintenance and costs of turn Michael, you want to lead the way?   Michael: Yeah, sure. So I think the biggest thing that you can do to be proactive and get lucky is just set expectations on the front end, give the tenant a very clean place to move into, keep it well maintained, keep it safe. There are more likely to feel a pride of ownership or rentership rather in a nice, clean, safe environment. And if you make it very clear that look, we are giving you this safe, clean place to live. We expect it to be safe and clean when, when it gets returned to us. And if you don't, these are the consequences. It's not threatening. It's just very level setting. This is what we expect of you. This is what you can expect of us. And again, someone who has a tenant move out and has a sparkling clean unit, someone might say, wow, you're so lucky. You're so lucky right at that happened. When in reality, no, you spent the time, energy and effort on the front end to set the expectation and make it very clear. Who's responsible for what.   Speaker 4: Yeah. Love it. It's building trust and being the duck legs under the water.   Michael: That's right.   Emil: Lots of duck legs, lots of duck legs.   Tom: Well, how about yourself? Any thoughts with regards to property condition and repairs and maintenance and turn costs and how do you tip luck scale into your favor?   Emil: Yes. One thing it's going, gonna kind of go off what Michael mentioned, but I think when you take over a property to set a, a good example or a new precedent, right? When you take over, let's say there's a couple of things in the inspection report that you could maybe defer, just taking care of them up front, especially if they're on the inside where the tenant they're in front of the tenant's face, right? Like holes in the wall, broken things, right. Fix those things and just clean up the place, make it more of that pride of ownership. When you take over, I think that kind of helps set the precedent for your tenants to know that this is under new management, you care, and you want this place taken care of. So it kind of goes along the lines of what, what Michael mentioned.   Michael: I just wrote down that note too, that I wanted follow up on. I'm so glad you touched on it. That it's showing, being responsive when it comes to repair requests or maintenance requests really shows that you as the owner care and thus will often incentivize the tenant to care because if you don't care as the owner, why should they care being a tenant in your property?   Emil: Yup. Tom, anything else?   Tom: So getting, building luck on property condition stuff, I would say quality is going to go a long way. And what I mean by that is you could, you know, there's always a decision when things come up repair versus replace with costs. There's a third element. I think of the quality of the work that is done. And it doesn't matter as much if you choose to repair or replace, if you do it with really bad quality. So when you're thinking about the vendors that you're using, making sure that they have a track record and a history and are reputable by sometimes you may pay a little bit more upfront to do work versus other options in doing the work. But if it's by a vendor that is reputable and does good work, a lot of times it's gonna end up being a lot cheaper because it's, you're not gonna need to go back, redo the type of work. And I know for myself, I lean on third party, property management, pretty so instilling, you know, my expectations with that, with the property managers and having a relationship and being the Duck's legs under the water and saying like, okay, Laura, who's my property manager. You know, if you're in my position, this is what I'm thinking about. I'd much rather have the quality work done. I'm willing to pay a little bit extra. What are your history of work with this vendor versus that vendor? If they're bringing me multiple bids. So really making sure that if you're going to spend money, which stinks on like repairs and maintenance, but it's really important, right? Because we need to have safe habital spots getting the work done by a, that has a really good track record of doing work. So I can measure twice cut once and just get it done with,   Michael: To piggyback on that. Tom, I also think that doing proactive steps physically to improve the property and making it more tenant proof can also tip the luck scales in our favor, such as you know, instead of cleaning the carpet or replacing the carpet, tearing it out and putting in hardwood or laminate flooring. And so that's going to reduce our costs in the long run, likely to have that stuff clean at every tenant turn, it makes the property more durable. It can often make the property more attractive. And so again, the Duck's legs being proactive on the front end, doing things that are going to increase our likelihood of success, I think is huge. When it comes to the physical property itself.   Tom: Regular inspections. That's a good one, too.   Michael: Absolutely.   Tom: Sometimes stuff can fester and it just gets way worse over time. It's if you pay for it right now and deal with it, it can be significantly cheaper versus letting it fester, especially anything that has anything to do with water, water. If it's wet, you're going to pay a lot I bet.   Michael: Did you just come up with that?   Tom: I did. Trademark.   Michael: That's really good.   Emil: What do you guys think about potential? Where can you set yourself up for bad luck with property condition? One thing I wrote down, let me know if you guys agree with this is let's say you buy a property. That's not in the best part of town. And you know, you're probably not going to get the type of tenant that takes pride in ownership and where they live. I think one thing that can set you up for failure is over renovating or making it too nice. Right? Getting stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, like making it look like a five-star neighborhood property would have when it's actually an, a one and a half or two star neighborhood. What do you guys think? Do you think there's a, that sets you up for bad luck if you over renovate or make things too nice if you're maybe not in the best part of town.   Tom: Yeah, I would say so. I would say being really cognizant of keeping it consistent with the neighborhood. I mean, there could be a situation, you know, it's not a one size fits all with everything. There could be a situation where you might be able to get a little extra boost on the rent by putting in the granite countertops in an area that's maybe a two star, but I'd say generally speaking is knowing that neighborhood and keeping it consistent, right? Cause you could be just dumping money into, you know, getting the fancy gold toilets may not be necessary. So, and this is being the duck legs, knowing the neighborhoods that you're in   Michael: I think to echo Tom's point, chatting with property, local property management and getting an idea and understanding of what's neighborhood. By that same token though, you could be the spark that ignites the dynamite, so to speak of a neighborhood changing, it's got to start somewhere. So if you're going to be that person that over rehabs, the property that could get everyone's attention and saying, wow, look at what's going on in this neighborhood money coming in, let's start also rehabbing our properties because clearly this neighborhood is changing. So that's kind of the opposite end of the spectrum is you could be the change investor.   Emil: That's a good point.   Tom: I like it. Let's jump into this next aspect of luck, which is on the acquisition side. So finding deals, buying deals who wants to start us off here talking about acquisitions and getting lucky with acquisition.   Michael: Why don't you start us off Tom?   Tom: I like it. I had some stuff in my back pocket. So I..   Michael: Always.   Tom: The biggest thing about acquisitions is always having the lights on always being up to evaluate a deal and to just beat this into the ground as being the duck underwater. I know, sorry, but here's the thing though. Like the machine doesn't turn off, right? So there's always deals coming up. That's available. And the people who are lucky are the people who are constantly looking through what is available. Now I understand life gets busy and there's times where you can put in a little bit more time or you're in more of an acquisition cycle. But even if you're not an acquisition cycle, still be constantly having your finger on the pulse and having enough dry powder available where if that screaming deal does come along, good news, you're going to be lucky and then you to buy it. And the reason you gotta be lucky is because you're constantly looking at stuff. And I feel pretty adamant about that is how you get lucky with acquisitions. It's just always knowing your market, always seeing stuff coming through, being persistent.   Michael: Yeah. To echo that. I think having your head on a swivel, even if you're not in a buying cycle, we've talked about this a lot on other episodes about kind of where we are in our own personal business, what cycle we're in. And many of us are not in a buying cycle, but absolutely keeping our eyes open our ears peeled, listening, looking for those great deals. I think in addition to knowing the market, being able to foreshadow a little bit and forecast a little bit above and beyond what you're seeing today and looking at trends and interpreting those trends to see where things are going to end up can be a huge, huge, huge advantage, and can often make people appear lucky. I bought in a neighborhood like I share with you guys numerous times in the Midwest and Northern Kentucky that has some really amazing government, local government incentives. And so I saw that and I understood the writing on the wall to mean that this area is really up and coming. And I did the homework to understand what's going on historically. And what's happening currently to then project on, where do I see this place? I'm going to go. I'm going to bet big on it. And that's seemingly proving to pay off. And so again, being the Duck's legs, you know, doing all that stuff on the front end to understand where this is going to end up.   Emil: I like that. Other things I would add here is if you are in a buying cycle, maybe you have multiple deal finders, right? So either have a couple of agents out there. You tell your PM, you're looking for a property you're on, Roofstock sending filters, get notifications. And also, I, you mentioned keeping your eye on the market, even when you're not in a buy cycle. I think that's so important because let's say you're buying a property once a year. If you buy a property, don't keep your eye on listings. Aren't keeping a temperature read on the market. You take a year off, you come back, you may have the bias you did a year ago and the market has changed the bunch. So I think keeping your eye on the market and looking at listings, seeing how quickly things are selling, how much are they selling for? I think that that just always pays whether you're buying or not.   Michael: One other thing to mention is we talk about, again, the opportunity for success and where preparation meets opportunity. I think the greatest deal of the century could come around, but if we're not prepared to execute on it, we're never gonna get it. We're never gonna seem lucky. And so being educated above and beyond understanding your market, I think is so, so, so hypercritical. And I know for me, if I had been educated prior to when I started investing, I would have been able to have invested sooner and hit even more home runs even more grand slams. So getting educated on how to purchase real estate, what that looks like, how to evaluate markets is so, so critical. I really can't stress that enough. And that's something I talk a lot about with people inside the Academy of, you know, the fact that you're here, getting educated is going to put you in such an advantageous position to be able to execute on things when they present themselves.    Emil: Well said. All right. So transitioning away from real estate investing, I'm curious to hear what you guys think is the luckiest thing that's happened to you in your life. So outside of real estate investing, what do you guys think is the luckiest thing that's happened to you?   Michael: I am going to force my wife to listen to this because meeting her is far and away, the luckiest thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life. You're welcome Claire. And thank you.   Tom: Oh, and we cannot repeat any of these ones that we have. So Emil, I'm going to leave you with a bunch of scraps.   Emil: Don't you, don't you say your kid!   Tom: Was definitely going to, I mean, people talk about the lights from the sky, getting a little bit brighter when you meet your offspring, your first child and it's real, man. I'm just love struck such a crazy life experience of meeting a child that is related to you. I'd say. And thank goodness, yeah, mom as well. But Michael already took that one and my beautiful wife. Gosh, I'm trying to think of, I could go on any other stuff. I mean, just generally speaking, I think I'm pretty lucky. Gosh, luckiest thing, luckiest thing.   Michael: I I've never heard anyone. Tom, I think say that they met their offspring, but it makes sense. Did you shake their hand?   Tom: Yes. I shook his hand, formally. Nice to meet you, sir. Tom Schneider pleasure is mine. Pleasure is mine damn glad to meet you. So yeah, I'm going to go son, meeting son, really crazy mind blowing stuff.   Emil: So awesome. So I get to be the direct that doesn't get to mention his wife or, or his baby daughter. I love them both. They are the luckiest things that have happened to me outside of those two. I'd probably say learning marketing. I mean, that is my profession and it's not what I started doing out of college. It was my third job out of college that I got into marketing. And to me, I see it as a skill that will always be there. I don't see robots or automation overtaking that I think they help marketers, but I don't see those types of things overtaking the marketer. And so for me to just have found something that I really enjoy doing that creates a good livelihood and that I think will be in demand. And I think it also just teaches you a lot about human psychology. You know, a lot of people look at marketing like ads and tools and all these things, but really it's learning how it's understanding people and how people work and what motivates them. So outside of my daughter and my wife, I'd say the luckiest thing that happened to me is learning about marketing and taking that on as a profession.   Michael: Emil, did you find marketing or did marketing find marketing find you?   Emil: Marketing found me. You know, I was, I was lost and I found my way through marketing.   Michael: That's awesome.   Emil: I was face down in a ditch somewhere. Yeah.   Michael: Marketing's like, Hey, are you okay? I can help   Emil: Marketing parted the clouds and shined its light on me.   Michael: That is lucky.   Tom: Alright. What else? Anything else? Alrighty then.   Alright, thanks for listening to today's episode, we hope you found it valuable. If you found this lucky duck episode to be valuable, please rate us on your podcast platform that you're using and feel free to reach out to us. You can reach out to us on Twitter or on Instagram. If there's any content you would like to hear, we would like to hear from you any questions, comment, and happy investing.   Michael: Happy investing   Emil: Happy investing.

País España Dirección Paco Caballero Guion Oriol Capel, Daniel Monedero, David S. Olivas, Antonio Sánchez, Nacho G. Velilla Música Juanjo Javierre Fotografía David Valldepérez Reparto Julián López, Miki Esparbé, Carmen Machi, Younes Bachir, Leo Harlem, Eduard Soto, Silvia Alonso, Malena Alterio, Tom So, Chacha Huang, Marcos Zhang, Malena Gutiérrez, Fele Martínez, Javier Cámara Sinopsis Con mil trescientos millones de habitantes, y a punto de convertirse en la primera potencia económica mundial, China ha traspasado el tópico de país exótico de cultura milenaria, donde se come arroz con palillos y las erres se pronuncian eles, para convertirse en un país moderno y pujante, una nueva tierra de oportunidades en la que todo es posible. Por eso miles de jóvenes, hijos de una vieja Europa cada vez más vieja, cargan sus ambiciones en sus maletas y cruzan nueve mil kilómetros de distancia dispuestos, como los pioneros, a conquistar el Lejano Este. Pero no es nada fácil triunfar en una tierra que tiene un idioma, una cultura y unas costumbres que están a un mundo de distancia. Y no sólo geográficamente. Tras 'Perdiendo el norte' llegan las nuevas aventuras de la generación perdida, que en su búsqueda de fortuna por el Lejano Oriente se va a encontrar más perdida que nunca.

Making Corvette C8 Sure, the UAW strike delayed the rollout of the all-new mid-engine C8 Corvette.  But anticipation and speculation continue to redline. For instance, automotive journalists flocked to the Corvette display during press days at the LA Auto Show.  And now reports are leaking that the Corvette C8 will have an all-wheel-drive hybrid version. But, hang on to your gear shifter, cause this hybrid C8 is being talked as delivering 900 pony-power!  Yaozah! So, since I'm not Jay Leno who's already gotten to drive around in a C8.  I did get to sit in one and record a podcast at the LA Auto Show. Chevy's Communications Director, Shad Balach joined me to share some details on the path to making Corvette C8.  Find out what he said about C8's electric plans below. -->Continue reading or click play below to listen.

Air Force One draws attention everywhere it goes, even the retired version at The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. And nearly a half-million visitors a year tour the world's most iconic aircraft.  Well, one of them anyway. Continue reading below or listen to the podcast during my private tour of Air Force One! ***Transcript*** Recorded February 12, 2018 John: It technically flew seven different presidents. President Reagan put the most mileage on it. I don't know what the exact number of that mileage is, but he definitely flew a great deal on this plane much more so than any other president. This was the aircraft that took him to Germany for the famous "tear down this wall" speech. Anything that was classified or I guess you'd call "secret" that was all removed prior to our obtaining the aircraft. There are no escape pods. Additionally, there are no hidden guns or bombs or anything else that can be released from the aircraft, so there's nothing like that and a lot of that are the fantasies in Hollywood that they portray in movies. The Home of Air Force One: The Ronald Reagan Library Tom Smith: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of these fine United States - Southern California. I'm Tom Smith, and in honor of President's Day, we are sitting underneath Air Force One at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. John: Correct. Tom: Okay. And that is John Lehne who's the building facilities manager here for the Ronald Reagan Foundation, which runs the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. John: Correct. We are part of the library... the foundation actually supports the library. It is actually run by the government, National Archives Administration. The Air Force One pavilion, which we are sitting in right now with the Air Force One plane, is operated by the foundation. So this is a little unique part of the library. Tom: So there you have it for the specifics. But what the exciting part is, literally I'm looking up at the belly of Air Force One and it's a pretty cool thing. We got some really neat pictures. John was nice enough to walk me through the plane, little private tour, got a couple of pictures. I wasn't able to sit in President Ronald Reagan's office chair, but I did sit at the conference table and that was pretty darn neat. So, John, thank you so much for that. Tom Smith sits at Conference table aboard Air Force One. John: You're very welcome. How Did Air Force One Get to The Regan Library? Air Force One at Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Tom: How did this plane get here? When you come to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the Air Force One pavilion, you can see a cool pictorial story that's told on how actually the building was kind of built around the plane. “It was almost like the ultimate ship in a bottle type of construction.” John: They put the superstructure, the building up. The plane had flown in a little prior to that, and they disassembled the plane, towed up here in pieces, except for the fuselage was one solid piece. They did the superstructure of the building, pulled the plane and the pieces into the building and literally put the plane back together inside the building. Stripped the plane, repainted it, shrink-wrapped it, and then they finished the building around the plane. When they were done with the building, they unwrapped the plane, cleaned it up, polished it up, then put it on display. It was almost like the ultimate ship in a bottle type of construction. Tom: And the plane landed actually at San Bernardino International Airport. John: It flew out from Andrews Air Force Base and landed here in California and then it was trucked from that airport, from the San Bernardino Airport to Simi Valley and ultimately here to the Reagan Library. Tom: There's a cool picture where you see the fuselage of the plane next to the wings of the plane next to the dirt mounds that are ...

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Tom: Joel, you speak Thai.Joel: Yeah, a little bit.Tom: Your wife speaks English.Joel: Yep, yep.Tom: So, at home, what language do you use?Joel: We usually speak English when we want to have real communication because her English is much better than my Thai, but I like to practice Thai a lot so when I'm being a little more playful, when the topic isn't serious and we really don't need to communicate, then we'll speak in Thai and I get a chance to practice and it's also fun for her to listen to me speak in Thai and to teach me. What's interesting is that, it depends also on who we're around, so for example if we're with my family and we want to say something in private, then we'll speak in Thai but if we're with her family and we want to say something privately then we'll speak in English so her family can't understand us.Tom: Don't your family think that's quite rude?Joel: Oh, they don't really, they don't really know what we're talking about so they can't be sure. It gets more complicated, though because she also speaks Japanese and I speak Japanese, so sometimes when we are with her brother who speaks English, we'll speak Japanese if we want to speak privately.Tom: And then again, there's your little kid. What language does he speak?Joel: I try to speak English most of the time when I'm with him because I want to have him hear me as a model because he lives in Thailand so he's always hearing Thai and I want him to have a chance to hear some English but I find that since I'm around Thai people all the time, they're speaking Thai to him, I start to get used to how they talk to him, and I start to kind of copy their examples, so sometimes it feels natural to me to speak Thai with him, but I try to speak English with him as much as I can.Tom: And what do you eat in your family?Joel: Oh, we eat Thai food all the time, yeah. I like it much better than American food.Tom: Is it because you like it or because your wife is good at cooking it?Joel: I guess both. I mean, you can't really find much American food in Thailand so it's much easier to get and if you were going to go to a restaurant, like ***** or something, even though it's not so good, it's very expensive, so, both. I like Thai food better and it's just easier to get when you're there.Tom: With the different languages you can't really settle down together in front of the TV.Joel: She usually likes to watch English programs, though, so but it's hard for me to watch Thai programs. I usually, I get bored very quickly because I can't understand much.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Tom: Hey, Joel, you got your hair cut.Joel: You can notice that. I don't have much hair left. You can see that it got cut.Tom: Yeah, why don't you grow it out?Joel: Actually, you can't notice right now cause it's cut so short but my hair's curly, so if I let it, and I'm bald on top now, so if grow it out I look like Bozo the clown.Tom: Did you have long hair before?Joel: Actually in college, I had long hair. I grew it out pretty long and then, you know, my hair is really blond. I don't know if you can tell now. It's gotten a little bit darker, but it was down to my shoulders and really curly.Tom: Wow.Joel: Yeah.Tom: When did you start losing it?Joel: I noticed sort of at the end of college, when I had long hair because it didn't grow nearly as long in the front. I always wanted it to be really even: long in the front and back, but it was, it grew much faster and much thicker in the back than in the front.Tom: So when it's all gone, are you going to start combing it over?Joel: No, I don't want to have the comeover. I, actually, my wife likes bald heads, so I'm lucky, so I just cut it really short.Joel: It's funny though. When I was really young, well when I was born, I was bald until I was maybe one year old or so, and I had very thin white straight hair, so it was perfectly straight, until I was about 13 years old, and as soon as I hit puberty, "booing"! My hair suddenly got curly, so as a self-conscience young adolescent, that was a but of a shocking experience for my hair to go from straight to curly almost overnight. Yeah.

Oktoberfest Car Show Ontario Volkswagen's 2nd Annual Oktoberfest Auto Show was a huge success!  The 2018 event brought out V-Dubs from old to new and, of course, they were driven by the owners/lovers of them. VW is known as a quality German import vehicle with a serious cult-like following. But working with Ontario VW this past year I've developed a completely new appreciation for the vehicles and its enthusiasts. They all love Volkswagen - seriously.  But there's a fun-loving division amongst the devotees.  That main division being; are you air-cooled or water-cooled? If you missed the event we'll take you back there in this on-site podcast recorded live during the event. And be sure to make next year's event at Ontario VW - great people, great cars, great time and oh yeah - great giveaways too!   ***Transcription*** Recorded October 28, 2018, in Ontario, CA The People's Car Show Jimmy: Volkswagen was always a part of that history, you couldn't talk to anybody and not mention a Volkswagen because guaranteed somebody had one. Everybody's in love with the car. They're all there to hang out, and they're having a good time.  We wanted to express our gratitude to our folks that buy Volkswagens, service Volkswagens, in love with the Volkswagen brand. Tom: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States, Southern California. Tom Smith here. And I am. We are.  You and me and a whole bunch of other people are out at Ontario Volkswagen in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario, California for the second annual 2018 style Ontario Volkswagen Oktoberfest. And joining me is Volkswagen guru - Volkswagen resident guru - of Ontario Volkswagen, Jimmy "VW" Willhide. Jimmy Willhide, ladies and gentlemen. Tom: Obviously as you can hear by the background noise, this is a...live podcast is a complete oxymoron, right? Jimmy: Sure. Tom: Because a podcast is never live. Jimmy: Right. Tom: Although with YouTube Live and Facebook Live we probably could do a live podcast. Maybe we'll do that one of these days. Jimmy: Yeah. Tom: In this case, we are outside. You can hear the music in the background, and we are here at the Oktoberfest auto show which Mr. Willhide is one of the key organizers of. Jimmy: Yes. Yeah, we try to set up a really nice show for everybody to come out and enjoy the day, see some really cool cars from different generations and have some food and drinks and hang out and talk to new and interesting people and their cars. Volkswagen Beetle Tom: And we've been doing quite a bit of that, and actually we've already started talking about the actual event that we're here for. So, I think we just dive into that. Jimmy: Sure. Tom: We're also going to talk about the history of the Volkswagen Beetle. Jimmy: Yes. Tom: Because really everything, it all started with the Beetle. Right? Jimmy: Yeah, it pretty much started with the Beetle for the U.S. You had a five [inaudible 00:02:05] two-door car that everybody could afford. Tom: But the Beetle started as the "people's car" in what year was it? [crosstalk 00:02:17] Jimmy: Was it 1934? That would be right after World War II? Tom: And that was the first car that Volkswagen, right? That was it. Jimmy: Yeah, that was the first car I believe introduced to the U.S. Tom: But that was the first car they made. Jimmy: Yeah. Tom: Right? Jimmy: Yeah. Tom: And then, when did it come to the U.S.? Jimmy: I believe it was 1934? Or no. Tom: No. Jimmy: It would be 1950? Tom: Okay. Jimmy: 1950. Tom: So at any right, the point is there's been a whole bunch of generations of Beetles, right? Jimmy: Yeah. Tom: The Beetles started the whole thing. Jimmy: There's so many different generations of Beetles I don't know where to start. I'm sure there's more that we don't even know about.

Best Selling Vehicles In History What do you think are the Top-10 best selling vehicles in history?  When we saw the headline we had to dive-in... it's not only a fun topic but interesting - truly. Before reading, on listening, jot down what cars, trucks and or crossover SUVs made the list.  Bet you don't get them all. In this iDriveSoCal Podcast, I give Clinton "The Professor" Quan a puzzle that he comes close to figuring out, and does a great job, but even he was stumped and surprised by a few of the answers.  I hope you enjoy this one - we sure did! -->Continue reading or click play below to listen.

Volkswagen Team Shant Bashian has been a Volkswagen guy, thru and thru, for nearly his entire adult life.  And sure he'll help you get the best deal possible on one, but perhaps more importantly, he'll detail from his own experience what makes every VW special.  He'll point out the very little things that make the biggest difference when it comes to what's referred to as the ‘fit and finish' of a vehicle. In this iDriveSoCal Podcast, we profile Ontario VW's newest team member.  Formerly of both Puente Hills and Pasadena Volkswagen; Shant shares his love or the VW brand and why he chose Ontario VW as his new home. And Shant is highly accessible – you can email him SBashian [at] OntarioVW [dot] com.  He loves meeting new customers that inevitably become his friends.  Click play below to hear the details from Shant himself! ***Transcript*** Recorded August 21, 2018  in Ontario, CA Top SoCal Volkswagen Team Adds To Its Ranks Shant: I've had three Touaregs, two Jettas, one Passat, two CCs. And, just recently in September, I surprised my wife by replacing our Touareg with a 2018 Atlas. Volkswagen has always been softer rubber materials on the dash, the doors, the buttons of the windows, the way they feel, the material. It makes all the difference.  These are the little things that VW looks at, but it brings out the quality. When you drive a Volkswagen, and you drive a different brand vehicle, you definitely immediately feel the difference. "I've had three Touaregs, two Jettas, one Passat, two CCs. And, just recently in September, I surprised my wife by replacing our Touareg with a 2018 Atlas." Tom: Welcome to iDriveSoCal the podcast, all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States, southern California. Tom Smith here, out in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario, California at our good friends, Ontario Volkswagen. And, joining me for this iDriveSoCal podcast is the newest team member of Ontario Volkswagen, Sales Manager Shant Bashian. Shant: Yes, sir. Tom: Welcome to Ontario Volkswagen, and thank you for joining me for the iDriveSoCal podcast. Shant: Thank you for having me, it's a pleasure. Tom: Ontario Volkswagen's a fantastic partner of iDriveSoCal, and Shant is a fantastic VW guy, has been a long time here in southern California. Previously at a couple of other Volkswagen stores, Volkswagen Pasadena, as well as Volkswagen Puente Hills. So I know the team here is very excited to have you, and again, welcome. Shant is always available!  SBashian [at] OntarioVW [dot] com Volkswagen Team: 101 Shant: Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Tom: So why don't... What we wanna do with this podcast is really let people know, this is a profile of you, right, dealer people. Car buying, quite honestly ... You've been a buyer, right? Shant: Absolutely. Tom: Before being in the business. Shant: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I've walked into dealers. Tom Smith: Yeah, and so you know having worn that hat, it can be a scary proposition, it can be anxiety-filled. Ontario Volkswagen, as well as everybody that we work with at iDriveSoCal, we're all about kind of pulling down those walls, pulling down those barriers and creating that level of comfort. Let's talk a little bit about your background in the automotive business. I know that your first entry into the automotive business was actually on the service side, which is pretty interesting. First he sold VW's then started driving them and hasn't looked back! | Shant Bashian of Ontario VW When The VW Team Grew Shant: You can say throughout the midway in my career because I went through 13 years in sales, then I tried service for several months. So I wanted to experience the service side, and I'm glad I did, I learned a lot back there. Tom: You know, I think, this is my personal perception, but also as a consumer, I buy a car... And I work with dealers, so I'm a little bit different. But, I buy a car,

2019 Volkswagen Jetta - All-New Generation Our 2019 Volkswagen Jetta review uncovered impressive and intuitive technology, increased and upscale interior space, performance and much more. Additionally, the new design looks great.  iDriveSoCal's Professor, Clinton Quan, picked up an all-new 2019 VW Jetta to review from our friends at Ontario Volkswagen – hear his complete analysis in this iDSC Podcast. ***Transcript***  Recorded in Los Angeles, CA The All-New 2019 Volkswagen Jetta Review Professor: The all-new Volkswagen Jetta has a different engine now. Very smooth, brisk acceleration. It feels a lot more premium compared to the previous Jetta, especially with that virtual dash, everything is right there at your fingertips, so it makes it really, really easy to operate. Tom: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States; Southern California. Tom Smith here with the Professor, Mr. Clinton Quan. Say hello, Clinton. Professor: Hi, Tom. The 2019 VW Jetta is bigger and beautiful! Tom: And today, we are talking about our good friends out at Ontario Volkswagen in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario, California. Specifically, a vehicle review. The 2019 Volkswagen Jetta. Now, to clarify before we throw it over to the Professor; the 2018 Jetta GLI, we just reviewed about a month, two months ago. Professor: Yes. Tom: So, that is the enthusiast's version, right? Professor: Correct. Tom: And as we discussed there, and I think in subsequent podcasts since, the Jetta was just completely redone. So this is an all-new Jetta. Volkswagen Jetta Enters Its 7th Generation Professor: This is in the 2019- Tom: All-new Jetta. And- Professor: The seventh generation. All-new 2019 Volkswagen Jetta Tom: Seventh Generation, and the enthusiasts' seventh generation, the GLI. We're under the impression that Volkswagen is going to be putting that out. They haven't announced that yet, but they're going to be putting that out, probably in the next year. Professor: Probably next year-ish. Tom: What have you. But so, this review is the 2019 Volkswagen Jetta. Take it away, Professor. 2019 Volkswagen Jetta Trim Configurations & MSRPs Professor: I drove the top-line trim, which is the SEL premium and for the 2019 Jetta, there are five trims. You have the S, which is the base trim; which starts at about $19,000. Then you have what I call the "mid-level trim", the SE. Around $22,000. Then you have a special sport trim that's called the "R-line".  That's about $23,000. MQB Platformed 7th Generation VW Jetta Then you've got the... You could call it the top-line, the SEL. That's about $24,000. And then you have this new luxury, premium top-of-the-line SEL Premium, which is about $27,000. Tom: And that's what you drove. So you drove all the bells and whistles. Professor: Yes. It's got the virtual dash, so it's very Audi-esque like. Non-Professional Reviews of the 2019 VW Jetta Tom: And so, just a quick plug also for some of... So, Clinton and I review a lot of vehicles, and Clinton's an enthusiast. But if you wanted to hear from an everyday driver, we were out at the Jetta Launch Party at Ontario Volkswagen. I guess this is about a month-ish ago. We did some reviews with various customers that were coming in just to drive for the Launch Party. Jetta Digital Cockpit They came in to check out the new Jetta, and so I think there are about five different podcasts that we did. They're little short ones, about five, six minutes each. They're with these everyday drivers that we did these podcasts with, they're enthusiasts in their own right, but Clinton and I do this all the time. So, he's a little bit of a professional. If you want to check out the other Jetta reviews, there are lots of great things that everybody is saying about the 2019 Jetta. 2019 Volkswagen Jetta Reviews from SoCal Drivers:

Jetta Review - Real Test-Driver From Loma Linda, California Bert Chancellor from Loma Linda, California test-drove the all-new Volkswagen Jetta. He was among a handful of lucky drivers who attended Ontario Volkswagen's Jetta Launch party. "I love the experience that it's truly centered towards the driver." And Bert's family has owned many Jettas.  Plus other VW's too.  Even so, Bert had quite a bit of praise for the all-new 2019 Volkswagen Jetta. Continue reading or click play below to listen to the podcast versions of this Jetta review from a real Southern California commuter in Loma Linda. ***Transcript*** Recorded @ Ontario Volkswagen More Real-Driver Jetta Reviews: Riverside Driver Family from Corona Inland Empire Driver Riverside VW Enthusiast Jetta Review From Loma Linda, CA Bert: We've owned several Jettas, I love the experience that it's truly centered towards the driver. And it's obvious when you set down in the car that it's about the experience of the driver. I love the customized, having it to the fob, and you move in and out from the seats, etc, you can set there and use that. I love the fact that they went a little bigger with the car. "...first of all, I'm really jealous. I liked the test drive." Tom: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States, Southern California. Tom Smith here and we are at the Jetta launch party, the 2019 Jetta launch party at Ontario Volkswagen in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario, California. I am joined by Bert from Loma Linda who just got back from a test drive of the 2019 Jetta. Bert, what'd you think? Bert: Well, first of all, I'm really jealous. I liked the test drive. Driver-Focused Jetta Cockpit It's a wonderful car. We've owned several Jettas, I also own an eGolf, and just really enjoyed the drive. More than anything, I loved how the experience of driving the car was centered towards the driver. Center Stack Angled Toward the Driver From the dash, from the controls, from the way even the center console sort of leaned in, that was my favorite thing about it. "I love the fact that they went a little bigger with the car." Tom: Feels like the cockpit kinda feeling to it. Bert: It did, it did. We had a 2014 Jetta, we have a 2016 Jetta, and I have a 2017 eGolf. And the controls, the, in the eGolf, they haven't really brought, until this Jetta model, that technology and that look and feel back down to the Jetta line. Wonderful. Jetta's Digital Cockpit Review I love the interaction, the UI's great, and I love the customized way you can tie everything back to a key fob. It's very helpful. Tom: So the key fob, I agree with you 100%. It's a lot of car for the money. And I was just chatting with your wife.  I mentioned that I have a six-month-old son.  And you guys have a nine-month-old daughter. But, getting in and out of the vehicle, the way me and my wife experience, I'm sure it's the same with you... Multi-Profile Digital Cockpit It's like, 'okay, I've gotta readjust this, readjust that, whatever.' So the key fob thing, where we have customization for both, is fantastic. I love that. It's a lot of car for the money. Bert: It is a lot of car. Tom: One of the things that we do on iDriveSoCal when we review vehicles is top three things. And it sounds like you're a big enough car guy that you might be able to pull off the top three things just off the top of your head here. What are your top three things for the 2019 Jetta? Bert From Loma Linda's Jetta Review - Top-3 Bert: Yeah, top three things... Driver-Focused Cockpit: I love the experience that it's truly centered towards the driver. And it's obvious when you set down in the car that it's about the experience of the driver. That's the first thing. Multi-Driver Profiles: The second thing I love, again, the customized, having it to the fob,

Jetta Review - Real Test-Driver from Riverside, California  Ian Duarte came from Riverside, CA to test drive the all-new 2019 VW Jetta at Ontario Volkswagen. And he was so impressed, that after doing so, he sat down to share his thoughts on the iDriveSoCal Podcast. Technically, Ian rode along with his friend Michelle Bentley.  And, the two diehard Volkswagen fans had nothing but high marks for the latest innovation from their favorite automaker. Continue reading or click play below to hear Ian's Jetta review - from a Riverside commuter. ***Transcript*** Recorded  @ Ontario Volkswagen More Real-Driver Jetta Reviews: Riverside Driver Loma Linda Driver Family from Corona Inland Empire Driver 2019 Volkswagen Jetta Review From Riverside, California Ian: I think the MQB platform has actually given the interior of the car more space, basically, without making the car bigger. Virtual cockpit, really cool. A lot of nice little things to mess with. Center Stack Angled Toward the Driver I definitely love the taillights and the headlights on these cars. Riverside VW Enthusiast Ian Duarte at Ontario Volkswagen Tom: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, a podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States, southern California. I'm Tom Smith and we're at the Ontario Volkswagen 2019 Jetta launch party, and joining me is Ian Duarte from- Ian: Riverside, California. Tom: Okay, Ian's Jetta Review from Riverside, California. Ian just got back with Michelle from a 2019 Jetta test drive. So, tell me what you thought. 2019 VW Jetta Ian: Well I can give you a different point of view over here, 'cause I was sitting in the back seat as she was driving, yeah. Tom: So Michelle, did she let you drive? Ian: I let her drive, yeah. Tom: Ah. Ian: You'll see you get a different perspective here. Tom: Absolutely. We need that perspective. I'm just putting the relationship together. Like, all right, Michelle's the driver, Ian's in the backseat. The all-new VW Jetta has gotten bigger! Ian: Back seat driver. Tom: So, how was the trunk, Ian? Ian: The trunk is actually pretty roomy. Luxurious And Spacious Jetta Interior Tom: It is. I was just kidding. How was the back seat? Tell me about the ride. Ian: It was actually pretty roomy, honestly, because like I've said, I've sat in the back of her GLI. And, I think the MQB platform has actually given the interior of the car more space, basically, without making the car bigger. Smoother All-New 2019 Jetta Tom: I love all the technology, innovation, including how they're innovating with engineering the interior of the car. What else do you think? Ian: I really like the virtual cockpit. Tom: So, did you get to drive, or you just got to see the virtual cockpit? Ian: I just got to see it. Tom: All right, yeah. It is pretty cool. What else? Ian: Well, I like the way the leather felt. Jetta Digital Cockpit Tom: Yeah. Ian: Because hers, SEL, being leather seats as well, I feel like they did a little nice update on their leather, as well. Tom: Very high quality. Ian: Yeah. "...I think the MQB platform has actually given the interior of the car more space, basically, without making the car bigger." Tom: With the pinhole and everything. Ian: Oh, yeah. Tom: It was like, all right, I'm getting into a quality car. To me, it felt like a lot more car than the price point. Riverside Commuter Jetta Review - Better Interior, Exterior And Performance Ian: Oh, yeah, of course. If you're gonna look at the competitors, obviously, you have a way nice interior, exterior, and performance, versus the competitors. Tom: Okay. All right, so, it sounds like you're a bit of a car guy, as well as Michelle's car girl. "...you have a way nice interior, exterior, and performance, versus the competitors." Ian: Oh, yeah, of course, oh yeah. Tom: All right, so then,

The Marconi Automotive Museum in Tustin, California looks, feels, and even smells fast. American muscle – check. Racecars – check. Ferraris and Lamborghinis – check and check. Sportbikes that give you whiplash just looking at them – many checks. Their collection also includes a Gullwing Mercedes-Benz and Rolls-Royce from the 1950s, a firetruck from the 1930s, and much more. It's an auto museum that makes kids, both young and old, grin and drool. But it's also a venue for private and corporate events and all for a good cause. The museum is also a non-profit that supports Southern California organizations that help at-risk children. In this iDriveSoCal Podcast we learn the history of The Marconi Automotive Museum from the museum's CEO, Priscilla “Bo” Marconi. ***Transcript*** Recording date – April 5, 2018 in Tustin, CA Marconi Foundation for Kids Bo: Somewhere along the way, Dick decided that he really wanted to put his money where his mouth is. He's always been very philanthropically-minded and so he decided to donate all of the car collection and the building to the Marconi Foundation for Kids. We've got to one-of-a-kind Ferraris here in our collection. We have the 53rd car that Enzo Ferrari built. We've also got beautiful Gullwing. Ranging from American muscle cars. We've got a Firefox fire truck from the 30s and all the way up to the modern-day car, so there's something here for everybody. Tom: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States--Southern California. I'm Tom Smith and having a lot of fun with iDriveSoCal yet again today as I'm in Tustin, California at the Marconi Automotive Museum, and joining me is Priscilla "Bo" Marconi of the Marconi Automotive Museum, excuse me, the CEO, actually. Priscilla, Bo--I'm gonna go with Bo--thank you so much for joining me. Bo: My pleasure. Happy to be here. "We've got to one-of-a-kind Ferraris here in our collection. We have the 53rd car that Enzo Ferrari built." Tom: So the museum was founded by your husband. Bo: It was, yes. Tom: And it is an adult playground. For anyone that's been here already, they know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't been here, you absolutely have to come, and you will see the most fabulous display of high-performance vehicles, race cars. And Bo is going to fill us in on how it became and what it's all about. Learn, Earn & Return Bo: Well, my husband Dick founded the place in 1994, and he bought this building which was a former solid oil manufacturing facility that had gone out of business. And I can remember seeing it thinking, "Oh this is a terrible place." It was a decrepit. I had no vision for what it could be. But Dick is a great visionary, and he put what he calls cubic dollars into it, and he formed this museum, and he moved his open-wheel race car team into it along with his car collection of about 75 cars. And so for a couple of years, he used it as a facility to tune the engines. We had mechanics running around and, because he raced professionally, that was the whole purpose of this building. But once he decided that he wanted to stop racing, he opened it up as a special event facility, and we became very organically. So somewhere along the way, Dick decided that he really wanted to put his money where his mouth is. He's always been very philanthropically-minded and so he decided to donate all of the car collection and the building to the Marconi Foundation for Kids, which is a 501 (c)(3) public foundation. And his goal has been to encourage other people to find their passion for philanthropy whether it's children, which is our passion, to give to at-risk children's organizations whether it's animals, the environment, whatever it is that hits your hot button. His mantra is to "learn, earn, and return." So you go to school, trade school, university, whatever your passion is, and then you earn.

Ontario Volkswagen Would you believe that the top-rated SoCal VW dealer, Ontario Volkswagen, started as a hot rod shop in the sixties in Pasadena, CA? Or how about that Ontario VW's General Manager, Earl Reed, got his start in the business washing cars? Yes is the answer to both of those questions. And those humble beginnings help to set this family-run Volkswagen dealership in a class of its own when it comes to accolades from their customers and VW alike. Hear the historic details of this uniquely 'only in America' story in this iDriveSoCal Podcast. Recorded at Ontario Volkswagen SoCal's Top Volkswagen Dealership - Ontario Volkswagen Earl: He started with a hot rod shop in the city of Pasadena in 1966 called Sticks Unlimited. In June of 2003, we built and opened up this facility, Ontario Volkswagen. Coming into a car dealership doesn't have to be an anxiety-filled transaction. We're really a family-owned and operated business is what we are. Look at the third-party review sites, look at what Yelp customers are saying about us. And, look at what Google plus customers, Facebook customers, these are all very valid third party websites that offer customer reviews, unsolicited customer reviews. You really have to experience it. "Coming into a car dealership doesn't have to be an anxiety-filled transaction. We're really a family-owned and operated business is what we are." Tom: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility from the automotive capital of the United States Southern California. This is a special episode as we welcome our newest partner from the world of automotive retailing, Ontario Volkswagen. Pre-Launch Arteon @ Ontario VW Ontario Volkswagen, obviously, located in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario just off the 15. And with me today is Mr. Earl Reed who is the general manager of Ontario Volkswagen, Earl, thank you so much for joining us. The History Of Ontario Volkswagen Earl: Well, thank you. We're really excited to be part of this fast-growing podcast community. Tom: So we were just talking off mic a little bit about how Ontario Volkswagen became, and it's a family-owned and operated store, has been for a long time, but it has a pretty rich history in the automotive culture here in Southern California. So why don't you take us from the beginning? Earl: Sure, yeah. Mr. Gary Sherman is the owner of Ontario Volkswagen and Ontario Volvo, and he started with a hot rod shop in the city of Pasadena in 1966 called Sticks Unlimited. Los Angeles County Roots w/ an Inland Empire Focus From the growth from Sticks Unlimited, he ended up getting a Fiat Peugeot dealership in the city of Pomona. And he triumphed during those days of the late 60s and early 70s. Then I think it was 1973, he acquired a Volvo dealership, Volvo and Fiat dealership, in the city of Pomona. It was called Frank White imports. It was down on Holt Boulevard there for many, many years. "And from the growth from Sticks Unlimited... in 1995, we acquired the Volkswagen franchise here in the city of Ontario..." From there, Mr. Sherman acquired the Chrysler Plymouth dealership, which was called Montclair Chrysler Plymouth. The Volvo franchise was moved from the city of Pomona to the city of Montclair under the name of Exclusively Volvo. Opened up in 1986 on Central Avenue, Central and Holt, in Montclair as exclusively Volvo. Earl Reed discussing the Ontario VW difference. And then he added Audi and Porsche in 1991, which was the old George Follmer Porsche and Audi. Then I joined Mr. Sherman in September, August, September of 1992. And, at that time, it was Exclusively Volvo and Porsche in that same building in Montclair. So he's been serving the automotive community since 1966 and primarily been in the Inland Empire...  since... the late 60s early 70s in the Inland Empire. So in 1995, we acquired the Volkswagen franchise here in the city of Ontario,

Interview Transcript Available Below Tom Christofferson is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who experiences same sex attraction. He is also the brother of Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Tom grew up in the church as a member, served a mission and married in the temple. His short marriage ended and he came out as gay and lived that lifestyle for many years. He started coming back to church with Bruce Larson as a bishop and David Checketts as his stake president. Tom's story is told in his book, That We May Be One: A Gay Mormon’s Perspective on Faith and Family. As leaders we can learn a lot from his experience of coming back to church and being rebaptized. Episode Highlights 6:30 Tom's story from the beginning 9:30 His story of excommunication 10:50 How his family wanted their love to be perfect as they accepted him 13:20 Bishop Bruce Larson's side of the story 16:00 Stake President David Checkett's side of the story 18:00 Bishop Larson and President Checketts did not know at first that he was related to Elder Christofferson 20:30 Sharing with the ward coucnil how to make feel Tom welcome 22:30 Response of the ward council 24:00 Tom was welcomed and loved unconditionally 29:00 Tom attended the ward for 5 years before wanting to come back to live the commandments 31:45 During the 5 years how Tom felt welcome in the ward 33:20 Everyone focused on the the relationship with Tom and not his progress 34:30 Study sessions with Tom and President Checketts 38:00 Meeting with Tom's partner 42:00 President Checketts meets with Elder Christofferson about Tom 45:00 Tom Christofferson's rebaptism 48:00 How this experience has helped Bishop Larson to be a better disciple of Jesus Christ 50:00 How this experience has helped President Checketts to be a better disciple of Jesus Christ Links That We May Be One: A Gay Mormon’s Perspective on Faith and Family Register for the North Star Leadership Session President David Checketts (far left) and the Christofferson brothers Interview Transcript LS: [00:02:30] Welcome back to the leading LDS podcast. My name is Kurt Francom and today I have the opportunity to be in beautiful downtown Salt Lake City with and really, I'm across the world and we'll explain that in just a minute. But, let's start with you, Tom. I'm in the home of Tom Christofferson. How are you? Tom: Very well, thank you. Thanks for joining us. LS: Yeah, well, I'm excited to have this opportunity. And, mainly this interview came to be as you release your book, "That We May Be One, a Gay Mormons Perspective on Faith and Family" and you've been on the interview circuit for that. Tom: It's been an interesting journey. LS: I bet it's been very fulfilling to share your faith through, through this method. Tom: It has been a unique opportunity to be able to talk about my feelings about the Savior and the journey that I feel I have been led along. LS: Yep, obviously we'll get the, the obvious things out of the way. So, your last name is Christofferson and you are Elder Christofferson's brother. Tom: And he is my brother. LS: Oh, that's right. You are becoming more and more famous through this, these interviews. Tom: So, we are a family of five sons. He is the oldest and I'm the youngest. LS: Nice. I'm the youngest too, so I can, I can empathize with that. That's right. That's right. And now, and we'll get into your story in the book a little bit, but also interviewed the other member or introduce the other members that are part of the interview. So, we're going as far as Australia to talk with President David Checketts. How are you a President Checketts? Checketts: I'm doing well. LS: Good. And now you don't live in Australia? I think many people recognize your name here in Utah, but you generally live in Connecticut. Is that right? Checketts: Yes.

This week we travel to Clare, Michigan to learn about the trials and successes of public transportation in Rural Michigan. **Please excuse the audio quality, it was the first episode ever produced for this podcast!** We get a chance to speak with Leadership in the Clare community to learn what really matters in Clare County isn't how we get to where we're going, but who we ride with.    Announcer: This Rural Mission is brought to you by Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, Leadership in Rural Medicine Programs. The podcast is funded in part by a generous grant provided by the Herbert H and Grace A Dow Foundation. To learn more about the Leadership in Rural Medicine Programs please visit  www.msururalhealth.chm.msu. I’m your host, Julia Terhune and please stay tuned to hear more from This Rural Mission.   Music   Producer, Julia: So the rationale behind making this podcast was pretty simple for me. I started biking, back and forth from work when I have to be in the office all day. I don’t do it every day, and I definitely don’t do it when I have to be in a lot of the different communities that I serve, and I started to look around at the transportation system in my county and I started to really think about, how this system works. Not just the Dial-a-Ride and the County Connect, that’s available in my county, but also things like the bike paths. And even if I didn’t have those bike routes, I have sidewalks, I have clean, well-maintained sidewalks. And I live in this community that is urban. I think with that urban distinction a lot of those things are easier to get simply because you have more tax revenue in these urban areas.   When we talk about poverty, most of us tend to think: urban centers. (Busy City Noises) I deal with rural communities. Rural communities are some of the most underserved rural communities in the nation when we’re talking about the economy, when we’re talking about resources, when we’re talking about medical professional. Medical professionals areas are rural areas. Pretty much across the board. There are urban areas that have shortages as well, but it’s predominantly a rural issue. (Music)   When we think about resources, we first have to think about: how do people get those resources? Because many resources don’t come to people’s doorsteps. Even things like mobile food pantries, people have to go to those places to get the food that’s being offered. They have to get to the health department to get the free health services. They have to get to the dental clinic and that  requires transportation. Now, in a rural community your geography is just so vast. You know, your city centers are smaller your suburban centers are smaller, places where people are living is vastly spread out and so to get to those resources is an even greater track. Combine that with economic issues like not having adequate jobs or having unreliable transportation because of limited finances, you’ve got a huge issue. (Music) One of the counties I’ve served is Clare County, Michigan. The average income, in Clare County, is about $33,000 per year and according to the Robert Wood Johnson County Health Ranking System, they are seventy eighth out of eighty three. I’m not going to bore you with what that means, but as far as health outcomes go, that’s not good.   You know, I look to this community and there’s a lot of poverty, there’s a lot of things that maybe aren’t going so well, but there’s a lot of things that are going right. And I got to talk to some really interesting people about the public transportation system in Clare County. (Music)   Tom Pirnstill: Tom Pirnstill, I’m the Executive Director at Clare County Transit. Well, it started in 1981, we have contributed a little over three million rides in that timeframe. We cover an area of five hundred and seventy square miles, population’s about thirty thousand. They’ve developed this dial-a-ride, or demand response, where people call us up and we start building a route based on call ins. So, it’s all fairly fluid and it’s about scheduling the busses and getting people to where they need to go and then going to the next ride as they call in. We have a thousand miles of road in Clare County and only two hundred and fifty are paved.   (Music)   Julia: Out of a thousand miles, in Clare County, only two hundred and fifty miles are paved. That’s only one quarter of the roads in Clare County. That also means that a majority of people who drive everyday are not driving on paved roads. Which can take a toil on their cars. Even if it’s a new car. Dirt, gravel, sand that can be a costly repair for even someone who’s middle class and has those resources.   Julia to Tom: So, that seven hundred and fifty miles of unpaved road, that’s probably really hard on your busses.   Tom: Oh, you bet!  You bet, yeah. And they’re hundred and ten thousand dollar busses. We can replace them seven years or two hundred thousand miles , depending on the capitol that’s available from the state. I have some busses that have over three hundred thousand miles on them. You’ve got to keep them because there’s nothing coming down that we can replace the busses and then that results in higher repair bills because like you said, the roads, they’re rough.   Julia: But there’s something really interesting about the public transportation system in Clare.   Julia to Tom: What kind of relationship do your drivers have with these people? I mean you talk about having…   Tom: They love them. They love them. Most of the time, the elderly, they cook for their drivers sometimes. They bring them cookies or cakes or whatever. They know them on a first name basis. If they come to their house and they’re not out there, normally the driver will go up to the door and find out what’s going on. They’ve developed that kind of a relationship, because we care about them.   (Music)   Julia: In my experience with public transportation, I’ve separated this idea of bus and bus driver, train and train driver. I think of public transportation as those pieces of metal that take me from point a to point b.   One of the students who is involved in the Rural Community Health Program and just so you know, the Rural Community Health Program is a rural training certificate program through Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. Katie Lindauer, Just spent a year in Chicago.   Katie: I spent the last year doing research and living in Chicago before returning to my clinical years.   Julia: She used public transportation to take her everywhere that she needed to go. And she can tell you that she did not have the Clare experience when it came to public transit.   Katie: As a single woman in a big city I was instructed by pretty much every adult that I interacted with, ever ever take public transit after, like, ten PM at night. I don’t know if that is necessarily a hard and fast rule depending on where you live, you know whether you’re alone on public transit or, you know, whether people are just being really protective.  But then there are other things too, like Chicago’s public transit system is pretty expensive compared to some of the other places I’ve been. But it’s also pretty nice and it’s usually pretty safe and you learn certain train lines are safer than others.   Julia: I also got to talk to Sarah Kile. And Sarah Kile is the Executive Director of 211 Northeast Michigan. And in a nutshell, they connect people who are in need to the resources that they need. Sarah Kile is the Executive Director, like I said, and she and her team serve twenty three counties and a majority of those counties are rural counties; one of them being Clare.   Sarah: The transportation infrastructure here in Michigan needs a massive overhaul. Because we pay insurance in middle class because that’s the bill that comes and we have to pay it. But when somebody’s in poverty and they get pulled over or they get into an accident we just dig another hole for someone. It’s really just an unfortunate situation and I think, looking at communities like Galdwin, Clare we have people who can’t drive. And that public transit, as limited as it is, you know, it’s only from seven to four or seven to five during the weekdays and you have to call a day in advance, sometimes you have to call three days in advance to schedule a ride. That is a lifeline for some folks. Where they couldn’t go anywhere without it. We have people who have to schedule their infusions around the bus schedule. That just blows my mind, like, I’m just flabbergasted that something like an infusion, they have to go three times a week, or well I can’t go on the weekends because I simply don’t have transportation. That’s shocking to me.      (Music)   Julia: And with 211, the Clare County Transit Corporation and the Community Foundations in the area have started to solve problems.   Tom: Non emergency medical transportation has always been an issue following the country. I mean you have ambulances and rescue squads, they do the emergency. The non emergency things has always been an issue of people being able to afford transportation to get there.   Julia: This non emergency medical transport system was created to meet that very need that Sarah talked about.   Tom: At our transit, we did a study about five or six years ago on that very issue. Of how can we get people in Clare County to the doctors when they need to go without fear of not being able to pay for it.   (Music)   Julia: Michigan State University has been training medical doctors in rural communities for over forty years. I know that this University is doing their part to help alleviate that medical professional shortage. But even if we have enough doctors, we will still need to make sure that everybody living in these communities can get to those doctor's appointments and this non emergency medical transport is helping to break down one more of those barriers.   You know, people need to get to doctor’s appointments, people need to get to grocery stores people need to get to play practice. But people also need to be part of a community. And that’s one thing that Clare County has got down. They are a community.   Dr. Bremer has been a physician in rural communities for over thirty years.   Julia to Dr. Bremer: Now, do you ever run across individuals who have a hard time getting transportation?   Dr. Bremer: Sometimes but not always. Most of them have a relative, a friend, neighbor. And so people help each other out in the community if, you know, Mary who lives by herself and doesn’t have any kids or family around, they usually have a neighbor who will take them, kind of thing. So a lot of that kind of stuff goes on. Neighbors, friends, somebody from church will bring you or that type of thing if they can’t find transportation on their own.   Julia: He hit this idea of community right on the head.   Julia to Dr. Bremer: In the rural communities that you’ve served, what is their greatest strength?   Dr. Bremer: The greatest strength is the people in each community. That’s what the strength is. People helping each other. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Whether it’s a big community or small community. You’re supposed to look out for your neighbors, help one another, share, help each other, think about each other, don’t think about yourself all of the time, kind of thing, we’re supposed to be a community. Whether it’s a big community or small community. So, that’s what a community’s supposed to do. A community can be anywhere. It doesn’t have to be a little Clare. It can be a big Midland or a Big Lansing, whatever. Yes.   Julia: Poverty and inadequate transportation will most likely be with us, forever. But there’s something else that will always be with us, and that’s each other. And I really think that what you get out of a community is what you put into it. And places like Clare County are putting a whole lot into their communities. And I think that shows, not only in the public transportation system, but in so many other organizations and collaboratives.   (Music)   Julia: I want to thank everyone for listening to this podcast. This Rural Mission is produced by me, Julia Terhune. I’m the Assistant Director for Rural Community Health at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, and I just want to say that I love Clare County. I also want to thank Dr. Andrea Wendling and John Whiting for your help and support with this podcast. I also want to thank Tom Pirnstill, Katie Lindauer, Sarah Kile, and Dr. Bremer for agreeing to be interviewed for this podcast. Before I go, I just want to encourage you, I want to encourage you to consider making rural your mission. And until next time, I’m Julia.   To learn more about 211, the Clare County Transit Corporation, or the Rural Community Health Program, please visit our website at www.msururalhealth.chm.msu.edu. By joining our website, you can connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You can also find out more about our musician. Music today was brought to you by Horton Creek and Byran Edgers, a local musician and Michigan native. I hope you tun in next time for more from This Rural Mission.  

Fisher opens the show following up on last week's appearance by Susan Snyder who "planted her family flag" with a personal website devoted to her family that has attracted numerous other descendants, including Fisher himself. Both Fisher and Susan were delighted to receive an email from a Cincinnati listener who ties into three ancestral couples shared by both Fisher and Susan. David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist for the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org then talks about his experience at the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference. He also shares news of the discovery of newly developed negatives of a World War I pilot killed in action in 1918. Where did the negatives come from and what do they show? David will tell you. David then jumps to the recent recognition of another aged World War II pilot who was known for more than just his military prowess. Wait until you hear what it is! Then there's word that BBC Scotland is looking for you if you had Scottish ancestors in Nova Scotia. David has all the particulars. David's Tip this week concerns a new app that allows you to snap a pic and have it go out as an old fashioned post card! He'll also have another great free guest user database from NEHGS. Next, Fisher talks to genealogical speaker, researcher, and writer Loretta Evans about "circumstantial evidence" in genealogy. How is it defined exactly and how can it help you "nail down" the line you're researching. Loretta has some great insight and advice. Fisher then visits with Bill Habermann of Tacoma, Washington. Bill has "adopted" over 1,600 people... all dead... in an overgrown local cemetery, and he's doing all he can to let you know who they are. What got Bill started on this and what has the response been? You'll love the story. Then Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com returns to talk preservation. Tom answers a listener question from South Carolina about using a national digitizing firm because no one provides the service locally. As usual, Tom has some great thoughts on protecting your most important family history assets. That's all this week on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show!   Transcript of Episode 156 Segment 1 Episode 156 (00:30) Fisher: And welcome to Extreme Genes! This is America’s Family History Show. My name is Fisher. I am the Radio Roots Sleuth, on the program where we shake your family tree, and watch the nuts fall out. Nice to have you along today. We’ve got some great guests. First of all coming up in about eight or nine minutes we’re going to talk to Loretta Evans. And Loretta talks about the use of “circumstantial evidence” when you’re trying to put together your family tree. How do you know that it’s really good enough? What can you use it for? She’s going to have that for you coming up a little bit later on. After that, we’re going to talk to Bill Habermann he is up in the Seattle, Tacoma area, and he has adopted 1,600 people. All dead. In a cemetery! And you can do the same kind of thing. He’ll tell you what he’s doing and how he’s helping people all around the country, in fact around the world, find some of their missing relatives in the Washington State area. But right now, let me get on to Boston and my good friend David Allen Lambert. He is the Chief Genealogist for the New England Historic Genealogical Society and AmericanAncestors.org, fresh back from the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference in Springfield, Illinois. How are you David? David: I’m doing good. It’s nice to be back on the ground in Beantown. Fisher: I’ll bet. And you had a good time there? David: We had a great time. And I want to let people know who go to conferences, no matter where it is, don’t be ashamed of wearing a lot of ribbons on your badge. Fisher: Really? Yours is practically like a loin cloth when you’re out there. [Laughs] David: Well I like to say maybe a shawl. [Laughs] Fisher: [Laughs] David: I had thirty-two ribbons on it and when I went to the Federation of Genealogical Societies gala’s 40th anniversary dinner, they had trivia and they also had a scavenger hunt. Fisher: Um hmm. David: 150 points for the longest badge put us over the top! Fisher: [Laughs] David: Myself and Mary Tedesco from Genealogical Roadshow, one of our friends and guests, all won over a thousand dollars in memberships and conference registrations and meals, we’re very, very happy. Fisher: Wow! David: So, laughing my way to the bank for the longest name badge at the Federation of Genealogical Societies and I’d do it again. Fisher: [Laughs] Unbelievable. I’ve got to tell you a story. Last week we had Susan Snyder on the show and she is the lady that set up a website and we talked about it, we did the whole segment about planting your family flag basically out there for people to find you and provide you with materials, and she’s had Bible pages sent to her and things relating to her direct ancestors. Things folks sold her or gave to her. She found me because we’re related. Well we had her on the show, and then the next day she gets a nice email from a guy, a listener in Cincinnati, Ohio, who said, “Hey, we’re related to!” and so now she’s exchanging information with him and I just love the way the show brings people together. David: It’s amazing. Just last week I got a person who has an oil painting of my third great grandfather’s sister born in 1772, and he was not really sure if his family will want it. So I told him I would give her a good home. Fisher: Yeah [Laughs] great! Wow. Hopefully you get that and when you do, send us the picture. We’d all love to see it. David: Hopefully it will be in my home some day. But I don’t want to wish him to meet his maker any time soon of course. [Laughs] Fisher: Of course. Hey what do you have for us today in our Family Histoire news, David? David: Well, the exciting story that I want to start off with is actually about photographs taken a hundred years ago by Captain William Chambers of the 49th Squadron in Kent, England. He was a recognisance photographer in World War I and was shot down in 1918 at the ripe old age of twenty-one. His camera and negatives eventually were passed on to his nephew who recent had them developed. It’s amazing! There are pictures of airplanes and pilots and people that have long since passed. But it gives us another fresh view on history from World War I a century later. Fisher: That’s incredible. What a great story. David: It really is. And I want to propose a toast to the subject of this next story. Second Lieutenant Donald Stinson now aged 93, received four Bronze Stars for his service in World War II, involving bringing guns and men and flying them to the front lines in Japan during the war. But one of the things he did, which is a light hearted note, he is responsible for bringing beer. Fisher: What? [Laughs] David: Twenty thousand cases of beer to thirsty soldiers in multiple “packiruns” if you will, to Australia and New Guinea. And I think that anyone who is a veteran could probably drink to that. Fisher: Wow, that’s great! Congratulations to him. That’s like the second week in a row we’ve had a story of a World War II vet in their 90s just getting their medals now. What is going on? David: It’s about time. It really is. Well I’ll tell you, going back a little ways to the days of immigration and to the east coast, Nova Scotia, which means New Scotland was settled by many people from the Highlands. In 1773 a vessel called “The Hector” brought 189 highlanders that disembarked and were changed in Nova Scotia forever. Now, BBC in Scotland is looking for the descendants. So if your ancestor came to Nova Scotia from Scotland perhaps on the Hector in 1773, there are passenger lists that exist, contact BBC in Scotland. Just check Extreme Genes.com. Our Facebook page will have more details for you. Fisher: That’s very cool. So the people from old Scotland are looking for the descendants of the people in New Scotland, Nova Scotia, to call back home. David: To old Scotland. Fisher: Yeah. David: New Scotland, old Scotland, it gets confusing. But BBC Scotland is obviously doing a little piece on it, so put your kilt on and go and contact them. Fisher: [Laughs] David: One of the things that I really enjoy is a good tip from a listener, and one of our listeners and someone who’s been on the show is the Photo Detective Maureen Taylor. Fisher: Yes. David: While I was in Springfield, she told me about a new type of app that she uses from the app store. There’s a variety of choices to choose from but it basically allows you to send a postcard. Take a picture with your smart phone, this company, for very cheap money, will print and mail mailable postcards for you for your relatives. So the old photo postcards you might have in your family archives, you can create new ones. Fisher: How cool is that! David: It really is. So that brings me to the NEHGS guest user database of the week which harkens back to Scotland again. We now have Scotland marriages 1561 to 1910 and Scotland births and baptisms from 1564 to 1950, in conjunction with our partnership with FamilySearch.org. Well that’s all I have for this week back here in Beantown. Talk to you soon my friend! Fisher: All right, great to talk to you again as always David. We’ll talk to you again next week. This segment of our show has been brought to you from MyHeritage.com. And coming up next, we’re going to talk to a woman named Loretta Evans. And Loretta is an instructor, she’s a researcher, and she’s got some thoughts on “circumstantial evidence.” Now, we hear people talk about it in the courtroom... does circumstantial evidence really prove a case? Well, in genealogy it actually can. And she’ll give you some examples of that and give you some other thoughts coming up in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show. Segment 2 Episode 156 (11:10) Host: Scott Fisher with guest Loretta Evans Fisher: One of my favorite shows growing up was Perry Mason. And, Perry would get into heated battle in the courtroom with the prosecutor, Hamilton Burger. “Ham Burger” was what he was called. And they’d say, “Well, Mr Mason, that’s just circumstantial evidence!” And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. When it comes to developing your family history and your family tree, how does circumstantial evidence work in there and does it really matter? Is circumstantial evidence really evidence? It is Fisher. This is Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. And my guest today is Loretta Evans, and Loretta specializes in researching the midwestern United States, and she speaks all over the place, and she’s written articles for all the big family history magazines. And Loretta’s in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Nice to have you on the show, Loretta! Loretta: Thank you. I’m glad to be here. Fisher: You know, I’m excited about this idea of helping people understand that circumstantial evidence really is evidence, and in some cases is very, very strong evidence. So let’s just start with some simple examples of what circumstantial evidence is that we may typically use all the time, right? Loretta: Right. For example, if you have a census record, and you have someone’s age, it isn’t proof of the year they were born. It gives you an approximate year they were born. Fisher: That’s right. Loretta: But it’s sort of depends on who gave the information out. If it was the mother, and this is the child, they’re pretty sure about the age of their children. But if it was a neighbor or a grandparent, they may be a few years off. Or if somebody had a reason to lie, a lot of women lied about their age in censuses, so you can’t. Fisher: I am so glad you said that! Because it’s not something that I can easily say, Loretta! [Laughs] But it is true. For some reason, more with women than anybody else, I’m just sorry, it’s just the way it is. They get younger as they get older! Have you picked up on that? Loretta: I have. In fact, somebody told me, but it may or may not be true, that someone had done a study of British censuses and they found that the average British woman aged about seven years between the ten year census records! Fisher: [Laughs] Loretta: And you know, in a sense if you want someone’s more accurate age, find them when they’re very young or very old. Fisher: Yeah, that’s right. Loretta: And they’re more likely to be honest about it. Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs] Absolutely! Well that’s a great example of circumstantial evidence. Give us some examples though, of course, of direct evidence. Just for the sake of comparison. Loretta: Okay. For direct evidence, on a death certificate, usually the person’s name, their gender, the date they died, the place they died, those are all directly given by the doctor in charge or the person who is giving the information. You can be very comfortable about those pieces of information. Fisher: Right, as long as the people really knew what they were talking about. Loretta: Correct. But for example, the birth date on a death certificate is a little bit suspect. Fisher: Right. Loretta: If it’s a baby that dies and the mother gives the information, yeah, I’d be very comfortable with that. But I had a great grandfather who died in Cleveland, Ohio in about 1900, and I’m thinking he was living in a boarding house because they got his name wrong, they got his birth place wrong, they got his age wrong. It took us a long time to convince the city of Cleveland that he really was the same person. Fisher: [Laughs] Loretta: And that we could put a headstone on his grave. Fisher: And so what you’re saying is, for a death, a death certificate is direct evidence. But a death certificate is circumstantial as far as their birth is concerned? Loretta: That’s true. Or their parents names or their parents’ birth places, they’re wonderful clues. Fisher: Yes. Loretta: And so, if you are a researcher, you take those clues and then you try to find other documents that can prove or disprove that piece of information. And then you can be more comfortable whether it’s accurate or not. I think any evidence in genealogy is accurate until the next piece of information comes along that might prove or disprove it. Fisher: Right. Loretta: Somebody said it was like washing dishes. You’re all done, and then somebody walks in with another dirty glass. Fisher: [Laughs] Wow. That’s not very attractive at all. Loretta: [Laughs] I’m sorry. That image is, you know, you think you’re done, and then somebody gives you additional information that might even call into question what you think is accurate. Fisher: Sure. Loretta: I had two brothers. One born in 1944 and one born in 1950, and they both died at birth. And they were both born on July 12th. And in our family that was this kind of a “tender mercy.” “Oh, they had the same birth date.” And when the cemetery records came online, my older brother Ralph was listed as having been born on July 11th. Fisher: Oh boy. Loretta: And it was in the family Bible. There were no birth or death certificates because they were stillborn. They’re on the headstone. They carved it on the stone. Fisher: [Laughs] Right. Loretta: They forgot it being July 12th. And my mother didn’t really care, and my brother didn’t care, but it drove me crazy. And, I finally got my mother’s hospital records because some mortuary records didn’t exist anymore, and she was in her 90s and she just sighed and signed the permission slip. “Yes, you can release my hospital records from 1944.” Fisher: [Laughs] Loretta: Anyway, I got it from a place in California that had taken all of the records and they were sold there. Anyway, the hospital actually was in Utah. But he was born on July 11th. The headstone is wrong, our family Bible is wrong. Although they were born close to the same day it wasn’t exactly the same day. Fisher: Yeah. I’ve seen this before. We have a family Bible that gives the death date of my great, great grandfather, and even the obituary said December 26th 1875. But the death record said December 27th. And it appears that what happened was that he died at home, late in the evening on the 26th, but the doctor probably didn’t show up till after midnight, because the death time was put down as 12:30 in the morning. Or, they just didn’t recognize that it was a new day, at the point that he’d passed. Loretta: You know, that kind of thing happens. My uncle was born near midnight at home, and nobody looked at the clock until after he was born, but he could have been born before midnight. Nobody ever really knows. They chose one of the days and put it on the birth certificate. Fisher: Here’s another sample of a circumstantial situation that came up. I tracked down a third great grandmother, and I was very fortunate that somebody had actually been able to come up with a family Bible that put her in the family. And, it was from this very same area, so I was pretty confident. But still, how could I know for sure that she was the only person of that name from that area? And so, circumstantial evidence often involves eliminating other possibilities. I think you’d agree. Loretta: Oh, very definitely. You not only have to try to find evidence proving what you have, but you’ve got to look for are there any other possibilities that this could be, and can you prove or disprove those other possibilities. Fisher: And one of the things that’s really helpful now with circumstantial evidence, and when you have a case like this... DNA. And I was very fortunate that suddenly I found a person matching me in DNA who descended from the brother of the person I thought it to be, from a grandfather of the person I thought it to be, and a great grandfather of the person I thought it to be. Which I felt was very good confirming evidence of this otherwise circumstantial case. Loretta: That is excellent. Yeah. Fisher: So you put these things all together and then you get the confirmation, several times hopefully, from DNA. And then you can put together your case and you know, “Hey, wait a minute, I’ve got something here I can be confident in.” And that’s maybe at the point where you can publish it or put it online and share it with other people. I don’t know how you feel about it, Loretta. I like to put things together first of all on my own, keep it to myself, until I’m really, really confident in what I’ve got before I really share it. Because, as we know, once something goes public, if you’re wrong, it will take on a life of its own and live for years and years and years. And it’s really difficult ever to get rid of it. Loretta: Oh, that is definitely true. There are two major places where people put pedigrees. FamilySearch.org, another is Ancestry. The difference is that Ancestry keeps each person’s pedigree separate. Fisher: Yep. Loretta: Where FamilySearch combines everything. And your cousin could come along and change things in a while. So yes, you do want to be pretty comfortable with what you’re putting out there before you submit it. Because you could take two people who live in the same area, who have similar names and make them into one person, and make it very, very difficult in years to come for somebody to separate those two individuals. Fisher: Yeah, that’s the problem. So, that’s why it’s really important to work the negative side. Try to disprove that it’s the person as well as trying to prove it. And maybe get a little DNA help as well. And at the end, your circumstantial evidence can really prove your case. Loretta: One example we had about somebody walking in with another dirty glass... Fisher: [Laughs] Loretta: ...where we had a photograph that was of this woman who had died in Winter Quarters, Iowa. And, my husband and I visited a distant cousin one evening and she had another copy of the photograph. But it was a larger copy and somebody had copied the name of the photography studio as well as the image, and this picture was taken by Ottinger’s in Salt Lake City, Utah. Well, the woman couldn’t have died in Winter Quarters and had her picture taken in Ottinger’s in Salt Lake City because he wasn’t in business at that time. Fisher: Right. Loretta: And he was half a continent away. Fisher: Yeah! Loretta: And so, we concluded that it was the step grandmother rather than the grandmother that was in the picture. Fisher: Interesting. Well, there you go. Always making a few adjustments along the way, right? Loretta: Oh, absolutely. And, any genealogist who is afraid that somebody is going to disprove all the things they’ve worked so hard for isn’t really open enough to be a really good genealogist. Fisher: The experts are often wrong. And the best ones will go back and correct their own errors. Clean up their own mess and wash their own glasses, right? [Laughs] Loretta: [Laughs] There you go. Fisher: Hey, Loretta, delight to talk to you today. Loretta Evans, she’s in Idaho Falls, Idaho, talking about circumstantial evidence. Is it real? Is it good? Can you use it? The answer is yes! Thanks so much for coming on. Loretta: I’ve enjoyed it very much. Thank you. Fisher: And this segment has been brought to you by 23andMe.com DNA. And coming up next, we’ll talk to a Washington State man who has adopted 1,600 people. They’re all dead! They’re in a cemetery! He’s getting the word out about who they are, and you’re going to want to hear his story in five minutes. Segment 3 Episode 156 (24:50) Host: Scott Fisher with guest Bill Habermann Fisher: Welcome back to Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It is Fisher here, the Radio Roots Sleuth, and part of my sleuthing has to do with tracking down people with interesting stories that I know might interest you. And this is a guy who I think is inspiring a lot of people around the country since his story broke recently in the Tacoma News Tribune. His name is Bill Habermann. And Bill, you work for a funeral company, yes? Bill: I do. Piper, Marley, Malinger and Oakwood are all tied together as one funeral home. Fisher: And yet, this all spills over into your hobby, as it turns out. You found a cemetery out in the middle of nowhere. I guess it's been grown over, and you've kind of adopted it. Tell us about this. Bill: Well, back in the 1880s when the Northern Pacific Railroad came out west and put a terminus here in Tacoma, they gave about 56 acres to the city for a cemetery. And back in those days, folks didn't want the cemeteries near the town, and so it ended up being out in the sticks, kind of. Well, then that cemetery became Old Tacoma Cemetery and was divided up into three parcels. One stayed as Old Tacoma Cemetery, or Tacoma Cemetery, somehow, and I haven't been able to find out how a portion of about eight acres became Oakwood Cemetery, and then off to the side of the two cemeteries. There are two acres that became the county's pauper cemetery. Fisher: And that kind of got overgrown and forgotten, apparently. Bill: Well, yes. And I gave tours of Oakwood several times, and people would ask me during the tour, "Well, what is that on the other side of the fence? I see a few headstones there, but it's pretty much just grass." And then I said, "Well, that's the county's cemetery which was closed in 1927, and there really aren't a lot of records around for it." Fisher: Now why is that? Bill: Well, I think back in the early days people just were not so record conscious as they are now. And either that or they wrote on a slip of paper and thought, "Well, I'll put it in the book sometime." And it didn't happen. Or the county said, "Well, it's up to the funeral homes to take care of the records because they're putting the bodies into the cemetery." They were each paid $4.50 per burial. So some of the cemetery records probably are just lost totally with the county, but I was fortunate enough to have the records for Piper Funeral Home which started here in 1908, and Malinger which started here in 1883. Fisher: They merged at one point. Bill: Well, they merged at one point, yeah. And then what I did, I just got curious and I looked up the folks who had some headstones and found some of them in our records and started putting that down. Somebody said, "Why don't you put this on FindAGrave because people might want to look up somebody." And I thought, "Oh, okay." And I started doing that and then going through all the ledgers here, I just came up with 1,600 folks that are... Fisher: Wow! 1600? Bill: Yeah. And that was at the time Karen did the article. Now I'm up to 1,626. Fisher: [Laughs] Of course. There's always progress. Now, would you find the names in the ledgers first? Or would you find the tombstones first and then try to track them down in the ledgers? Bill: Well, the initial 15 headstones or so, I looked for them in the ledgers, but then I just started with page one of the Piper book and looked through every page, a page at a time, and if I saw $4.50, that was a first give away that it was somebody that went into the pauper's cemetery. Fisher: Interesting. So it didn't mention the cemetery, it was the price that gave it away? Bill: Yeah, it's the price that always gets me to the page, right. Fisher: Oh, that's fascinating. So when did you start this project, and what has kept you going, and how often do you go there? Bill: Well, I started doing in on FindAGrave about six years ago. The people who own or are in control of the cemetery really don't want folks walking around in there, because several of the graves are sunk in pretty badly, because folks were put into wooden boxes and into concrete grave liners. So they tend to like to leave it looking a little rough, as it said in the newspaper article, so that everybody isn't cramming around in there looking for things. The headstones even are in such disarray sort of that I have not been able to figure out even the rows or the blocks or the plot numbers, like we have in our cemetery, to locate a specific person. And some of those folks might not even be anywhere near the headstone that's standing there. Fisher: Right. So the tombstone itself is the giveaway of who's in there, but you just don't know where the grave itself might be? Bill: Yes, right. Fisher: Wow. Bill: And some of them face east and west, and some of them face north and south, and some of them look like they could be in a row, but others have been marked just set kind of whacky. There are two Japanese headstones there that face no particular direction, you know, they're kind of out in the middle of nowhere. Those two fascinated me because periodically when I'd look over the fence I would see fresh flowers put on those two graves, and they're back from the early 1900s, and sometimes there would be small food offerings there also at those two graves. I haven't seen anything there for the last two years, but somebody was coming in there and still honoring their deceased family members. Fisher: That's amazing. Now, what have you learned about the people that are buried in there? Have you found some unusual or interesting stories about them? Bill: Yeah. There is one fellow that still kind of plagues me. His name is Taggart, and his story is sort of interesting in that he was a well known supposedly wealthy person here to Tacoma back in the early 1900s. And sad to say, his wife became insane and went to the hospital for the insane. While he, in the mean time, lost all his money, regained some money, lost it again, ended up living at the poor farm, and apparently he decided to try to commit suicide by cutting his throat with a straight razor. Well, the hospital saved him, but then ultimately shortly after, he died of pneumonia, which got a lot of people back in those days. Fisher: Sure. Bill: His headstone looks like a military headstone. I checked in the Civil War records and there are so many Patrick Taggards that I kind of lost track of did he really deserve a military headstone. But it's not carved in the way of any military headstones that I've ever found online. So he's kind of a curiosity for me. I really would like to get him a new headstone if he is military, but again, I almost run into a brick wall. Fisher: Sure. And that's the problem with common names, of course. So what about families? Have other families reached out to you from near and far to say, "Hey, you found my person I've been looking for!" Bill: Yes. I've gotten some thank you letters from folks, and on FindAGrave, they can correspond back and forth with me, and so they have thanked me and some folks have sent me information to add into my book. There's an infant that died I think age about three weeks, and the family didn't know whether the child was buried. They were so happy to find where the child was, and they sent me a copy of the baptism certificate for this infant. Although that's the only existing document there is, other than the fact that the child is somewhere in those two acres. Fisher: So, what about restoration of the cemetery? You're allowed in there and you're saying others are not, is there any interest in that on behalf of the owners or on the part of the owners to do this? Bill: I don't think so because it probably would be very costly, first of all, to mould the place and keep the grass looking nice, because here in summer everything turns yellow and dries up. The cemetery that they do own, Old Tacoma, is watered all the time with underground sprinklers, and they have their own wells, but I'm sure that they are not interested in spending probably thousands and thousands of dollars to make the cemetery look presentable. Fisher: You would think that people would have to adopt it, I guess, the descendants of those who are in there, if that was ever going to happen, right? Bill: Yeah. And because it's privately owned by Tacoma Cemetery, I don't think that they could even work that. It kind of would be a real conundrum. Fisher: Sure. He's Bill Habermann. He's a funeral director in Tacoma, Washington, and he has adopted his own cemetery up there and is getting the information he's finding up on FindAGrave. Bill, thank you so much for doing this! And I'm sure you're inspiring others who might want to take on the same kind of project wherever they are. Bill: I hope so. And thanks for the call! Fisher: Hey, this segment of our show has been brought to you by LegacyTree.com. And coming up next, we'll talk preservation with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. It's time to be getting ready for the holidays. He's got more great advice, coming up for you in three minutes on Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show. Segment 4 Episode 156 (37:10) Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry Fisher: And welcome back to Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com. It Is Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth with my good friend Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. He is our Preservation Authority. And Tom, good to have you back. Tom: Good to be here. Fisher: And we do have an email here from Richard Halter, and I believe it’s pronounced Sharon, South Carolina. And he said, “Fisher and Tom, I saw this ad on Facebook and my mind immediately jumped to all I’ve learned from your shows.” Now, he sent us a link to another digitizing firm that’s national. And he said, “My first thought was that they’re not going to do everything that Tom says to look for when getting your products digitized. And the same time though, I live in an area where there isn’t anything available other than big box stores which I don’t even like. Would you recommend something like this store as an option for someone who just wants to get the media digitized? I can do pictures and I’ve played with audio as well as slides and negatives and I’m getting better. I can also take video and convert it from DVD, CD and all this, as long as I can get it to the PC to work on. I’m not a professional to say the least, but I do the best I can and I’m getting better as I go. I’m a very big proponent of getting all of these memories digitized and I’d like to give people some options for things I cannot complete yet. Your loyal listener, Richard.” Tom: That’s a great email that you’ve sent us. You know, there’s a lot of things in here that are really great. I love how you want to get all your stuff digitized. You’re trying to do as much as you can which we really advocate, and then some of the things of course you can’t do. Now this place that you mentioned, I can’t really say whether they’re good or bad because I’ve asked listeners in the past, if you have good experiences with places whether they’re local or national let us know. If you have bad experiences locally or national, let us know also so that we can warn people or encourage people to go to these places. This is one that I’ve never received any information on. I’ve checked out the website, it seems legit and everything looks nice, beautiful website. They’re about the middle to high end which sometimes is good, sometimes it’s bad. Because most of the time when you see these real cheap things, you’re getting what you pay for, and it’s not very good. So they have a fair price, the price is a little higher than what we charge on our online store. But if it’s closer to you and you feel more comfortable doing it, what I would do is, always start with the smallest package kind of as a test drive and see if you’re happy with what they do. And then of course send in all your other stuff and if you’re happy let us know. Fisher: Sure. Right. And testing is a key thing. And I would imagine, aren’t there ratings involved with this somewhere online that he could check out? Tom: You know, there really should be, and I’ve thought about this before getting out there and doing some experiments with some of these different places and actually go in and give them multi-star ratings. So that’s something we’re looking at maybe in 2017, we might actually come out with a rating system. But we really need our listeners to let us know where they’ve had good experiences and bad experiences. And let us know places that they’ve used so that we can maybe start doing a rating system. I really encourage you use local places as much as you want. Use national places if you find out they’re good. You can go to shop.TMCPlace.com and get our prices. And usually if people are close to what our prices are they’re probably legit because they’re doing the right thing. If they’re way below, I say stay away. It’s not worth it. I’ve run into so much product places like that. Fisher: That’s the thing. This is not the kind of thing you really want to price shop on so much. I mean, if it’s too cheap to be true, it’s probably too cheap to be true, Tom. Tom: That is so true! [Laughs] Fisher: [Laughs] Tom: Yeah, you need to be careful. One thing that I really advocate that I think is really, really important which we have never gone into because I don’t like it. A lot of transfer places, they use high speed. So instead of like a VHS tape taking two hours to transfer, they can transfer it in 15 to 20 minutes because they’re doing it high speed which reduces your fidelity. Fisher: Of course. Tom: You know if it didn’t do that everybody would be doing it. We would do it. We could drop our prices way down. However, we wouldn’t be giving our clients the quality that they want. You know, if you’re in a situation where money is really, really tight and it’s that or nothing. It’s still scary, because I have people who come in to me and say, “Hey, we sent it to this place online that’s really cheap. We didn’t get our stuff back. Or it came back really bad. They told us our tape is bad.” And then we had to go and “undo” what the other people did. Fisher: All right. Well, what do we have coming up in the next segment here, Tom? Tom: We’re going to talk about some scanning parties we’re planning. Fisher: All right, we’ll get to that in about three minutes. This segment has been brought to you by Forever.com. And if you have a question for Tom Perry you can always write to him at AskTom@TMCPlace.com and you might get to hear your question answered on the air. From Extreme Genes, America’s Family History Show. Segment 5 Episode 156 (44:20) Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry Fisher: And we are back, final segment of Extreme Genes, America's Family History Show and ExtremeGenes.com, Preservation Time with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. Tom, you were just talking about a scanning party you've got coming up. And let's just explain to people first of all what a scanning party is. Tom: Okay. It’s a lot of fun. It’s not a MRI or CRT or anything like that. Fisher: [Laughs] Right. Tom: What we do is, we scan your photographs. So this is where anybody can bring in one of those sterilight 16 quart shoeboxes with the lid on. Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs] Tom: And you can pack it with your 3x3 up to 8x10 non-damaged, non-mounted, loose photos, and we can scan the whole box for you for twenty five bucks. Fisher: Wow! Tom: So it's an absolute killer deal. Fisher: And fast too, right? Tom: Oh yeah! Oh yeah! It's really fast! It’s amazing! But that's why they can't be mounted or anything like that. They need to be all organized. If you have multiple sizes, just organize your sizes together. And bring your own thumb drive. And there's no additional charge. If you want, we have 16GB flash drives for only ten bucks. Fisher: Now where are you going to be doing this? Tom: The first one we are doing is November 11th and 12th in Midway, Utah. That's kind of up in the mountains, a beautiful ski resort area. Fisher: Wow! That's going to be great. Okay, so you have a location there. Tom: Right. Fisher: So people who would be in the Utah area would go where in Midway? Tom: It’s going to be at the Homestead Resort. It’s all part of the FamilyHistoryExpos.com convention that they're having, those two days which we talked about, about a month ago. So if you want to sign up for the convention, you can come in and do that. You can come in for the scanning party. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Remember, it needs to be up to 8x10 and it’s got to be in sterilight box with the lid on. No great big posters. We won't be able to do anything like that at this time. Fisher: All right, but you can do stuff that's small, very small. Tom: Oh yeah! We can go all the way down to 3x3 as long as they're in good condition. And if you have some pictures that are starting to fade and things like that, don't think, "Oh, I can't do these." No, this is a good time to do your faded ones, because we're going to stop them from fading anymore. We'll give you a digitized copy of all of them. And then whether you want to do it next week or next year or ten years from now, you'll have the high definition file that you can go in and do color correction. Or if you say, "Hey, this is over my head. I don't want to be involved in it." You can email it back to us and then we can do the color correction as well. Fisher: Now what kind of dpi are we talking about? Tom: It’s usually about 1200 dpi. Fisher: Oh that's good! Tom: Oh yeah! It’s a really high dpi. Fisher: It’s solid, yeah. So I've done this recently, of course, I've gone ahead, all of my old home movies and videos digitized. So I've got like 110 of them on disk. I don't even know what's on them all, because I didn't even know what was on the videos when I gave them to you in the first place. The joy of it, though, is I can take them one at a time, maybe one a week, right, and transfer it in some way and edit it down to just each individual thing. We'll, here's a birthday on this video, that's separate from the time we got to meet Joe DiMaggio over here or something like that. I mean, you can separate them all out. And so, with photographs, it would be much the same. You can digitize them all. And then when you get around to it, you're there. And what a great opportunity this is… Midway, Utah, November 11th? Tom: 11th and 12th, correct. Just go to FamilyHistoryExpos.com and you can sign up for the convention if you want to go to that as well. And just remember, like you just mentioned, it’s good to get this stuff done. And I've even had people tell me that they're going to go on a long trip, so they get videos, photos, all these things scanned, and then they sit in the back with the kids and put the DVD in, and they're sitting there writing notes. So when they're driving down the highway they can sit there and watch the thing, instead of watching Aladdin or something with their kids. They can say, "Oh, yeah, this is grandma." and talk to their kids. And make sure you have your iPhone or a tape recorder running, so when you're explaining all this stuff to your kids, you've got it down. And then later on you can make a slideshow with your narration for your great, great grandkids who will never know you, but they'll be able to hear your voice describing who these people are in the photos, who they are in the videos. It just makes it so nice. Fisher: Boy! What a great idea! And you know, trapping the kids, I love that! [Laughs] Tom: [Laughs] It’s great! We're going to be doing a whole bunch this next year in 2017 working with our Going Postal stores. So we're going to have a lot of fun in 2017. Fisher: All right, Tom. Thanks for dropping by. See you next week. Tom: We'll be there. Fisher: And this segment of the show has been brought to you by FamilySearch.org and RootsMagic.com. Hey, thanks again to our guest, Loretta Evans, for coming on and talking about "circumstantial evidence." Does it really add up? And to Bill Habermann from Washington State, talking about the cemetery he adopted and how you might be able to do something of the same. Hey, and don't forget, if you're going to become your family's family history expert, you need to sign up for our free newsletter, The Weekly Genie. Do it at ExtremeGenes.com or our Facebook page. Talk to you next week. And remember, as far as everyone knows, we're a nice, normal family!

Záznam Science Café Praha (12/2015) o historii a praktickém využití 3D tisku. Kde se vzaly 3D tiskárny? Co umí a s jakými materiály pracují? Jak může 3D tiskárna pomáhat učitelům ve výuce? Hosté: Mgr. Luděk Míka z Přírodovědecké fakulty UK a Tomáš Soóky, spolumajitel společnosti 3Dwiser.

Yehuda Katz and Tom Dale join us to talk about the road to Ember 2.0 and "Fast Boot". They share insight about why they stick to a 6 week release cycle, and why they think JS frameworks might be the future of all web apps (especially content sites). We also chat about what "indie open source" means, and exactly how much design goes into the Ember project and community. Yehuda Katz (Twitter) Tom Dale (Twitter) Tom Dale's Klout score is 66 Tilde.io Erik Bryn Yehuda at Hack Summit: "Indie OSS" HTMLBars FastBoot: Ember's Server-Side Rendering solution Tom on Shop Talk Show on Server-Side Rendering Rendr JS Yehuda's RailsConf keynote: "10 Years!" Skylight.io: Make your Rails apps faster with actionable insights Transcript: FILE NAME: The Frontside 16 - Yehuda Katz & Tom Dale Talk About Javascript DURATION: 55:59 minutes CHARLES: Everybody, welcome to Frontside the Podcast, Episode 16. We've got Brandon and Stanley here with me on the podcast and some very special guests who need no introduction, so I'll let them introduce themselves. TOM: Maybe we just start with Yehuda because he's the most famous. Are we starting by number of Twitter followers? STANLEY: Actually, Cloud score. TOM: Yeah, it's Cloud score based. YEHUDA: I think Tom has a higher Cloud score than me. BRANDON: All right, Tom. Go for it. TOM: Hey, what's up? I'm Tom. I had the idea for Ember JS in the shower. [Laughter] YEHUDA: Hey. I'm Yehuda. I work on standard stuff and Ember a lot these days, and now Rust also. TOM: Yehuda just joined the Rust core team. I don't know if you guys saw that. BRANDON: I did see that. Rust is a programming language. YEHUDA: Programming language. STANLEY: Are we going to get to talk about that later? BRANDON: Sure. TOM: We can talk about whatever you want. I'm not going to have any insights on that. YEHUDA: We'll have some insights. TOM: Yeah. I don't know if you guys ever saw the Pokemon Movie, but basically Yehuda is reenacting that with core teams. You've got to catch them all. [Laughter] BRANDON: That's great. STANLEY: That's not just the movie, Tom. That's literally everything around Pokemon. TOM: Oh, okay. STANLEY: That is the tagline. TOM: I will definitely defer. You seem like an expert here, Stanley. STANLEY: You know; I know the most important facts of all time. BRANDON: Stanley is on the Pokemon core team actually. STANLEY: I actually just made a new Pokemon that's like a guitar, a chair, and a microwave put together. BRANDON: What's it called? STANLEY: Rock-On. TOM: That is the worst Pokemon name I have ever heard. [Laughter] TOM: Oh, my gosh. BRANDON: All right, well, off to an auspicious start here. So the two of you and Leah formed the original core team for Ember. Is that fair to say or were there other people involved at that time when you kind of were switching SproutCore 2.0 to Ember? YEHUDA: I don't think I would call the original group that switched SproutCore over to Ember necessarily the core team. I would say that there was a bunch of people that were working on what was called SproutCore 2 at the time at Strobe, and it doesn't -- what we were doing there doesn't really meet my requirements for a good core team or a good Indie Open Source project. But one of the things that we did after switching over to being Ember and announcing the separate project was to make the core team more like what I would want. TOM: Well, I would say that there was never one moment where we were like, hey, let's create a core team. I think one thing that I learned from Yehuda about managing an open source project is that it is extremely important to start delegating way before you feel ready or comfortable. So there was a point early on where we were just totally overwhelmed as people started using it and people came along and were interested. And so we just gave them commit bit without really thinking about the bureaucracy of it or the structure of it. And then it definitely got to a point where it was like, "Why is there no core team yet?" because there's a ton of people with commit. So we should probably think about this a little bit more. YEHUDA: Of the people who are on the core team now, Erik, Chris, and Steph were all involved extremely early. I think Erik Bryn was the second contributor. Well, the first contributor after people working at Strobe, and Chris and Steph got involved really early because they were building an app on Ember that was very, very mobile focused. Well, it's a mobile app, and so they needed heavy performance, and we were not necessarily focusing on that, so they got involved pretty early also. BRANDON: And you gave a really awesome talk about this recently at Hack Summit. We'll throw the link to that in the show notes. I thought it was terrific, and I thought there was a lot of amazing ideas that were clearly born of painful experience. And I want to talk about that in a moment and kind of basically running and maintaining an open source project that keeps the open source ethos, I think, was kind of the thrust of the talk and keeping the Web and Open Source Indie. But before we jump into that, I wanted to get kind of a -- without going into, like, a full state of the union, there's a really lot going on in the world of Ember right now. It can be actually kind of hard for individual developers to just keep up with the news of it. There are just so many cool things happening at once. And there are a few things in particular that I wanted to get an update about. You guys are doing some really interesting stuff right now, but some things that are shipping soon: HTMLBars is actually happening. YEHUDA: It's in the beta. BRANDON: Yeah, it's in the beta, so people -- we tested it in our app already, and with one exception with, I guess, Ember list view isn't quite ready for it yet, but. YEHUDA: I think that's ready now too. BRANDON: Oh, really? TOM: Yeah, that just got updated. BRANDON: So, yeah, it was phenomenal. I mean it just works. Like, it was pretty amazing. So the benefit to users for that has been kind of already gradually been implemented where the metamorph tags in the DOM were gone. TOM: Right. BRANDON: What else can people expect to see once HTMLBars is in place? YEHUDA: So let me just reiterate a thing that you just said that maybe people weren't clear about before I let Tom a little bit about HTMLBars, which is, one of our major goals now and probably forever is to continue to update things incrementally and without breaking apps. And that's something that takes a lot of effort, so I want to reiterate it because it's probably the driving force of everything that we do, so like you said, there's a lot of news. We've been talking about a lot of stuff. We can talk for hours on it, probably. But the key thing is that a lot of times you hear there's a lot of news in a project, and it feels overwhelming. It feels like, oh, my God, if there's that much news, it probably means I'm going to have to spend the next five years catching up with all the things that are happening. And with Ember, our major goal is to make sure that all that, all those new features don't affect your app. I mean there will be a 2.0, and at 2.0 there may be some breaking changes, but even with the 2.0, all the breaking changes will land before 2.0. They'll land on the 1x brands together with deprecation warnings so you'll learn about them as you upgrade. TOM: Yeah. YEHUDA: And so I think this is the driving force of everything we're doing now. TOM: Yeah, I think, with 2.0, it's not like oh, my gosh, there's all this new stuff I have to learn. Instead, what it's going to be is us removing stuff that you probably never even learned about anyway. YEHUDA: Or that we told you in 1.10 or 1.11 to switch away from and you had plenty of releases to remove. TOM: Yeah, you'll have ample warning, and you'll definitely -- it's not going to blindside anyone. But I think this is exactly the point is we're on a six-week release cycle, and it is impossible to do big bang stuff in six weeks. Right? Think about any big software project anyone listening to this has worked on. It's hard to build a huge thing in six weeks, which maybe seems like a limitation, but actually I think we both see that as a huge strength, which is that it really forces you, as an engineer, to think about, okay, I want to move mountains. But I need to do it six weeks at a time, so how do I basically touch back down to reality as often as possible? With HTMLBars, if you think about it, it's a pretty dramatic thing, right? We're basically entirely replacing the rendering engine of this pretty large JavaScript framework, which in some sense is like trying to change the engine on a 747 mid flight. And the only way that we can get away with doing that is to do it very incrementally. And the only way we can do it without breaking people's apps, I should say, is to do it incrementally. Step one was metal-views, which removed metamorphs. But, fundamentally, all view rendering was still string concatenation. And then the next step after that was to get actual HTMLBars in with creating DOM instead of creating strings. YEHUDA: There was actually another step in between, which was to change all the -- so the internal, whenever you use a curlies and handlebars, those curlies, in the old version of the templating engine, would go and they would have ad hoc code to observe something, observe paths, and there was all this complicated code at each point where a curlies was used anywhere in the templating engine, and the new system -- and this is again behind the scenes, so it's easy for even Tom to have forgotten about it. We refactored everything internally so that it used a stream-based system so that all the parts of the templating engine don't have to know exactly how that's all structured internally. And that makes it a lot easier to do performance optimizations, but also makes it a lot easier to avoid mistakes and bugs that cropped up from time-to-time. So that was another step in the direction that was necessary to get all the way to the end. TOM: So now that's in, and I think the next step is to actually -- the next step will be now that we've got HTMLBars integrated in a backwards compatible way, the next step is introducing nice, new syntax. So just one example of this is this gives us the ability to remove the bind-attr helper. Most people that I've noticed when I'm teaching them Ember intuitively think that they should be able to do attrf equals curly, curly URL, and that doesn't work together. You have to do bind-attr. But because HTMLBars is a much smarter parser, we're able to have that context, and we can actually just dramatically simplify the whole model. BRANDON: Okay. And you also answered another question I had, which was, there are a lot of people basically talking about how they should be building apps for 2.0 friendliness, but it sounds like if they stay with the point releases, there'll be very little work involved in moving to 2.0. So you don't have to kind of like today sit and architect your app in a certain way as long as you're staying up to date with the point releases. Would you say that's relatively accurate? TOM: Yeah, I think so. 2.0 is not going to have any new features, and one feature that Teddy Zeenny is working on for the Ember Inspector, you know the Chrome and Firefox plugin for the developer tools, is adding a deprecations pane. So what we expect to happen is that people should just keep upgrading their apps on the 1x point releases and then, every upgrade, you may see one or more deprecation warnings pop up, either in the console or in this pane in the developer tools. And you just fix those at your leisure. Then when 2.0 comes out, all that will happen is that the payload size of Ember will shrink. YEHUDA: Yeah. I think another way to put all that is, when we looked at React, so we looked at React a lot as part of the run-up to 2.0 for the past, like, six months. And when we looked at React, initially we saw a programming model that actually wasn't that different from how we thought people should build Ember apps, so things like you should have data flowing down from a single point and, in Ember, that single point is the model hook in your route, and then we always thought about data flowing down. And you should have events bubbling up, and you should use actions mostly for communication. I remember Erik Bryn very, very early on said, "I think people are overusing data bindings. People should use events more." And that's when we started adding the evented system to a bunch of the parts of the framework. TOM: Actions. Actions weren't there originally … two-way bindings. YEHUDA: Well, we added actions, but we also added, like, Ember.evented. TOM: Yeah. YEHUDA: And I think we kind of knew all this, right? And so idiomatically the way that Ember 2.0 works is actually not that different from how we thought Ember 1.x should work, but I think one of the things that ended up happening is that because data bindings are so -- two-way data bindings can be very nice and clever, a lot of times people would reach for two-way data mining because it was the first thing that was sitting there. And then they would end up building somewhat complicated systems that rely on communication through two-way data mining. TOM: The syntactic sugar pushed you in that direction. YEHUDA: And so a lot of what Ember 2.0 is is about making syntactic sugar more honest about what is the right default, and that does mean that there may be applications that were heavily relying on communication, especially communication channels through two-way data bindings. And that will work much less nicely in Ember 2.0, and it might feel painful to upgrade if you're trying to be both idiomatic and upgrade to 2.0 at the same time. But I think, for most people who are using actions and were using data down through the model hook, I think a lot of it will feel very familiar, will feel very much like how you've been doing things all along. CHARLES: Cool. I actually had a question about HTMLBars landing, and that's when we upgrade our apps, everything should just work seamless. Like Brandon said, we actually did a spike of that, and it mostly seems to be the case. You said that there are no new features, but are there more, like, newer development stories around? Like, given that the templating engine or the view layer understands the DOM, what power or APIs will users have to interact with it, like to do animations or bring things in and out and stuff like that? YEHUDA: Oh, yeah. CHARLES: Is there any of that stuff planned? YEHUDA: I don't think we meant to suggest that there are no new features in number 2.0. Just that they will land in the 1x series, I think, is the point. CHARLES: Ah, right, right. I see. TOM: I think probably the biggest feature is just speed. And I think, also, what HTMLBars' architecture unlocks is the ability to better integrate with other libraries by adopting kind of a diffing approach similar to what React does with the virtual DOM. Basically, in my mind, HTMLBars is all about a bunch of infrastructure work that allows us to make the programming model feel more natural for people who are…. YEHUDA: One way to think about it is that it's the first templating engine that was ever built specifically for Ember. Handlebars templating engine before was built as a general-purpose templating engine, and we pushed it as far as it could go to be real useful for Ember. But things like bind-attr and the metamorph tags kind of crept in as necessary because the templating engine wasn't really built for this purpose, the exact purpose that Ember was designed for. And the HTMLBars engine, part of it is that it's DOM based, and part of it is that it supports diffing, and part of it is that it's faster. But I think, ultimately, it allowed us to look at a lot of areas that are annoying about using templates in Ember and make them nicer. And, yeah, so I think that it's -- TOM: I'd say it also unlocks things like we're working on server side rendering right now, and a lot of that is due to the power of HTMLBars because we can run it in so many different environments, and we can model all of these things as streams internally. It gives us a lot of flexibility about what we can do with your applications. You know, we can do things like server side render your applications even though, of course, you never designed your app for that case in mind. But because of how expressive the templating and, in fact, the entire application architecture is, and because we all agree as a community that this is how we architect our apps, it unlocks a lot more stuff. And I think there'll be more things like server side rendering in the future that we all benefit from by sharing this very declarative application structure and very declarative templating language. YEHUDA: Yeah, I mean honestly, under the hood, the fact a lot of the innovations of the templating engine are not things that any user will ever see directly because they're just implementation. And if we wanted to go around pimping things like streams or the way that the diffing algorithm works internally and the way we clone fragments and all this stuff, we could probably spend a lot of time pimping it, and maybe that would even make a lot of people, some people happy. But I think you'll see, over the next year or so, these things will all lead towards better features or to more features that will be nice, and that's how I think we'd like to roll -- TOM: I think Web components integration is a big one. YEHUDA: Ah, yeah, that's a good point. TOM: I think HTMLBars makes it very easy. And so, in terms of actual improvements coming on top of HTMLBars, the component syntax, instead of being curly, curly to indicate that you want a component, you'll be able to use just regular angle brackets, so that'll be nice. And another thing that we're really keen to get rid of is: You know how today when you're building an Ember component if you want to customize the element associated with that component, you have to say, like, tag name, class name, bindings. You guys know what I'm talking about? BRANDON: Mm-hmm. TOM: So that's kind of annoying because all of those special properties on the component class that you used to customize the element are all duplicating features that already exist in the templating language. So it's just kind of this weird bifurcation of the programming model where, if you want to customize the element for this top level, do it in JavaScript. Everything else, do it in the template. So HTMLBars will allow us to allow you to customize your component element purely in the template, and you won't have to -- basically there are far more cases now where you'll be able to get away with a component that's just a template file, and you'll reduce the number of JavaScript classes in your app. YEHUDA: Yeah, I think, from a high level, the biggest -- the high level of the internal technical improvements are largely that it allows for contextual work. So the old templating engine wouldn't necessarily know that you're inside of an attrf when you have curlies, so we would have to spit out a bunch of extra stuff and maybe make you use extra helpers. It wouldn't necessarily know that you're in image FRC or a video tag or a component. It wouldn't be able to tell if you were using a polymer component that implements the bind protocol, right? But the new templating engine basically lets us see exactly what's happening at every curly, and that just has a large number of positive effects. BRANDON: So you said something else that I felt like was a good segue into the next part of the discussion that this basically allows you to do server side rendering, which you guys are really, like, in the thick of it right now. But for me, a lot of the talk I've seen a about server side rendering comes across as a little inside baseball. There's this sort of discussion between people who are really into React because they're suddenly doing a lot of stuff with server side rendering, and they're seeing some benefits out of it. And you see this stuff kind of pop up in the JavaScript community, but I'm curious to know if you guys can explain a little bit about the benefit of server side rendering that this is a major new feature coming to Ember now. YEHUDA: I'll let Tom maybe give the full pitch, but I think one thing that I feel somewhat strongly about is that, for most people, if you don't have a system that actually gives you something that works pretty well out of the box, in other words it doesn't ask you to do a lot of the work yourself, the idea of isomorphic server side rendering where you run your same app on the client and the server, I don't think that that ends up being worth it. And if you look at a lot of apps that use Ember today, a lot of them have spent relatively little time building non-isomorphic solutions for specifically SEO that have been very, very cheap in terms of time and very, very effective. But I think there's the: I want to not have to write that, even that little bit, and I think that that you get a lot of benefits out of if you just have your framework do it. In other words, if it's not just like your framework does 20% and you do 80%. If it's your framework does 95% and you do maybe a little bit, or you have some constraints, I think that is worth something. And I think the rehydration of fast boot is worth something, although that has even more issues and even a larger percentage that most people have to do on their own. Basically, I think the TLDR for me is that I've always saw server side rendering as indeed somewhat inside baseball because, for most people historically, and I think this is even true largely about React, the solution that you're offered is the framework will do a little bit for you, and you have to go figure out a lot of the details about how to make this work for real. And I think most people just don't have the time to figure all those details out. TOM: So it's been kind of interesting to watch this play out over the last year or two because I think there's been a big split between the JavaScript application community and old school people that create content for the Web who are really keen on this idea of progressive enhancement. And so there's kind been this split. And, for me, for a long time, I personally didn't really care about this case because, in my mind, JavaScript apps were really good for what I'll call workspace apps, which is most of them are behind a login. You log in. You have these very rich interactions. You're editing something. You know, I worked on the iCloud apps. It's a feature, not a bug, that Google can't index your calendar and your email, right? So to me that was the use case for JavaScript apps. But that was until I saw content sites. Like, I remember the first time thinking, "Wow, maybe JavaScript apps are actually the future of all Web applications," was when I saw Bustle, actually. When I saw Bustle, it was just a content site. It was just news articles. And if you would've asked me, I would have said you should probably use Rails or some other server rendered framework for this. But then I saw it, and it felt just like a website. I couldn't actually tell the difference other than how damn fast it was. And I kind of had to step back and question all of my opinions about how people should be building these kinds of applications. And especially for content sites, I think that the server rendering is really important, right, because historically your user has had to download all of this JavaScript and all that JavaScript had to be downloaded and evaluated and run before they saw anything. So having the ability to bootstrap that process on the server and have the first bits that the user starts downloading not be the JavaScript payload, but be HTML and CSS, so that the first thing that they see is useful, I think that's really going to change how people build applications because you get the benefits of server rendering while still retaining the kind of interactions that you can build with something like Ember that you just can't do with Rails. YEHUDA: But again, I think people trying to do this on their own and taking maybe a half solution and then trying to figure out how to make this work reliably ends up producing things that are pretty buggy and feel pretty bad on first boot, or they end up requiring tremendous amounts of engineering resources. And it's possible that, like, huge companies can make this work. But I mostly think about startups, and startups simply do not have the engineering resources to take on the server side rendering task on their own, so this is why I think we care about it for Ember because, as Tom said before, Ember is already pushing you down a pretty conventional path, and we think -- our hope is that by having people do that conventional path and us taking charge of server side rendering will have something that works mostly out of the box for a lot of users. Again, assuming they follow some additional constraints about what you're allowed to do on the server. TOM: And I think we should be clear here because there's, as always happens, there's ambiguity in the terminology. So first is the term isomorphic app, which I don't really love that term, but I guess we better get used to it, Yehuda. YEHUDA: Yeah. TOM: But there's really a spectrum. On the one side of the spectrum you have something like Airbnb has a library for Backbone called Rendr (with no e - well, one e, but not the second e). And that kind of lets you wire up some of the server side rendering. But again, it's very, very manual. And the whole purpose of this is just to make sure that the first thing that you deliver to the browser is HTML and not JavaScript so that the user, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled or they're on a slow connection or whatever, they get something useful. But then on the other side, you have things like Meteor or Asana where the whole idea is -- and to me, I'll be honest with you. It strikes me as extremely silly, but the idea is that you're writing both your server and your client in the same code base, and then you're deploying them both. You describe it, and it sounds like this magic bullet, but it also just seems really silly to me. YEHUDA: Well, I think the fact that even the first releases of Meteor had if Meteor.isClient and if Meteor.isServer, and even the first demos had large blocks of content…. TOM: Yeah. Conditionals. Yeah. YEHUDA: Basically means that people hadn't really figured it out exactly right yet. TOM: Yeah, the point is that even if you have a client side app, your server still has a lot of responsibilities, especially around data access to the database, authorization, authentication, and so on. And putting that in the code base with your UI and your drag and drop code just does not make any sense to me. So I want to be clear to everyone listening that that is not what we're going for. The idea is not that you're writing your json API server in Ember. The point is that you're writing the same old app. In fact, we hope that you don't have to make any changes to your app. And you can deploy it, and it will do a render using the same code. It's basically like your app running in a browser on the server, and then we'll have some way of -- YEHUDA: Except not actually a browser. TOM: -- it's actually a transferring state. YEHUDA: Except, importantly, it's much, much cheaper than being an actual browser. We're not using phantom JS or a zombie or anything. TOM: Right. Conceptually a browser, but we don't want to pay the cost. Phantom JS is a source of great pain for many people, ourselves included, so we want a pure JavaScript environment. But conceptually it's a browser. YEHUDA: I think the reason I hopped in there is I just want to be clear that the goal of conceptually a browser is actually not to be a browser, but to make Ember itself internally abstract enough so that the most expensive parts of being a browser can be replicated in a cheaper way on the server. Obviously the most important part of that is the DOM. And that's the part that React worked out for server side rendering is use the virtual DOM on the server and not a real DOM, right? And that means you don't need real phantom JS and the full scope of DOM. But there's also other stuff like how your routing works and how the model hook runs and how it makes requests, how it makes "XHRs" to get the data in the first place. Right? There are a lot of details if you think about what it takes to boot up an app in the first place. For us, the goal is to go through that whole process of booting up an app all the way through, but not including the did insert element hooks in your DOM and make sure that all that stuff doesn't require -- it has really constrained and clear abstractions, right? So rendering has a render abstraction and routing has a location abstraction, and the DOM has the HTML bars, little dom, lower case dom abstraction, right? So instead of saying we're running it inside of something that pretends to be a browser, we're saying Ember doesn't actually care whether it's in a browser or not, but it has very, very clear abstractions for what it means to be a browser. BRANDON: Okay, so is there--? It sounds like it could be a little like -- is this a little ways off? It sounds like there are a lot of benefits. Like, if you see the hand rolled stuff that Discourse has done, clearly this is something that Bustle cares enough about to sponsor, this is probably a little ways off for Ember developers. Is there anything that you want people doing Ember to know right now about server side rendering in terms of how it's going to affect them or some of the technical stuff that you're learning through this or anything like that? TOM: I think we've been thinking about this particular problem for a very long time. And in fact, we've intentionally designed the architecture of Ember specifically to handle this case, even from the beginning, even like three years ago. We knew that this is something that we wanted or at least we didn't want to paint ourselves into a corner around. So I think there are two aspects of this, and one of them, I think, is pretty well bounded and pretty straightforward. The other one is definitely going to require a little bit more research. The first step is simply getting rendering happening on the server. So because we designed Ember for this case, we were actually able to get Ember as a framework booting up in node in about a day's worth of work. So a couple things have crept in. There were areas where we had been a little bit sloppy and introduced dependencies on things like document.body, jQuery, things like that. So it was about a day to kind of encapsulate those, make sure that they weren't hard requirements for booting the framework, and that was about a day's worth of work. And then, by the end of the week -- we've only been working on this for about a week now -- at the end of the week, we actually had an app booting in node and handling route requests. So in terms of progress, it's been really great. But I guess all that we're saying is that, in a week, we were able to capitalize on the last three years of work we've been doing. That's not as impressive as it sounds. YEHUDA: It was nice that there were relatively few regressions, right? TOM: Yeah. YEHUDA: That the list of things where people were accidentally doing things that assumed the browser was actually relatively small. TOM: Yeah. And the way that we did that is basically introducing an abstraction that provides your environment to you, so a node that's different than in a browser. So that's the first part is to get the app booting, and the second part is to get it rendering. I think what's really cool is that, even though HTMLBars, of course, is a DOM based rendering engine, or despite that, we still use an abstraction around DOM access. What we're going to be able to do when we start, again, in earnest tomorrow, on Monday, is basically replace that DOM helper that we used to create DOM in the browser with something that we'll be able to build up strings so that you can build up your HTML on the server and serve that to the client. That's step one: rendering. I think we'll be able to make quite quick progress on that. I would guess probably about -- I don't know if I should give timelines here. I think we're ballparking around a month before we can at least beta it, the server rendering. BRANDON: That's a little faster timeline than I had assumed. TOM: That's purely rendering. I want to make clear that that is purely for things like SEO, for Web crawlers, for curl, things like that. Then the next phase after that, and this is where it gets into the tricky bit, is being able to -- YEHUDA: Rehydration. TOM: -- is rehydration, what people call it. What we call fast boot. And with fast boot the idea is that whatever state that we use to build up your application on the server, we also transfer that state, not just the HTML, not just the output, but the state that we use to build that output is somehow seamlessly transferred from the server to the client. And the client basically just takes the HTML that we've given it and reconnects all these bindings and goes from there, so it's totally seamless to the user. YEHUDA: And I think there's some complexity there. For example, there may be some part of your page that you can't actually render on the server because it says, like, "Hello, authenticated user," with the user's name. So thinking about ways to make sure that you can mark those as needing to be rendered on the client without causing jank. There's a bunch of stuff like that where, at first glance, it seems not too bad, but I guess the high level if there's a determinism issue, right? So the goal is to make sure that roughly what you did on the server is the same thing that you do on the client because if it's too far off, then you end up having to throw -- no matter how smart our algorithm is, we're going to end up having to throw away everything and replace it again. The idea is how to structure your app, how to structure the way that you set up your app in Ember CLI so that you tend to be putting out output that's deterministic on both sides. And, like Tom said, I think state is maybe overbroad. It's mostly modeled batter, right? Making sure that the model batter that you got on the server is equivalent and transferred together with the HTML payload so that the model hooks that you have in your client will not have to go make another XHR. They'll just have the data that the server already collected, and then hopefully rerender an equivalent DOM on the clients with relatively low…. TOM: There are just a lot of tricky cases, like imagine you have a bound helper that shows relative dates, like 30 seconds ago. So you have a clock on the server, and then you have a clock on the client. How do you reconcile those two? YEHUDA: Yeah, so the good news there -- the good news with all that, without getting too much into the weeds, is that the HTMLBars' engine is already broken up between rendering the parts of your DOM that are static, that are like the hello, the text hello inside of an H1, and updating the static parts with dynamic content. And today that's purely a performance optimization, and so that we could use the same document fragment over and over again after cloning, but that will also allow us to use server rendered content where, instead of expecting to have an empty text node that is to be filling in with dynamic content, we'll have a filled in text node. And we see, in that case, Tom, that the time that is in there already is not the correct time. It's not the equivalent time, and so we'll update it. So that's sort of like the React diffing strategy. I'm less worried about, like, there's a single text node with the wrong content because I know we can deal with that. And I'm a lot -- although if it's too much changes, it will look very bad. It will look very janky. I'm more worried about, like, this entire conditional change. So you're looking at something and then, like, your sidebar swaps out for a different sidebar, which I think would be a pretty unacceptable UI. CHARLES: Obviously there are a lot of different server side environments that people use. What requirements of the server is there going to be if I'm using a Rails app or something in Python or Java or whatnot? How am I going to interface to this? TOM: Well, you definitely need a JavaScript runtime, right, because your Ember app is written in JavaScript. Unless you're planning on pouring it into Ruby or whatever, we're definitely going to require JavaScript runtime. And I think we're starting with just supporting node. But what I would like to see, and maybe you guys can write this, is a Rails gem that you can install that will install dependencies in everything and basically get set up in a production environment. YEHUDA: I think one thing people often forget is you can definitely -- you could you have a node app running. People try to embed JavaScript. They try to use, like, The Ruby Racer, and embedding JavaScript is quite a disaster. BRANDON: [Laughter] I'm sorry. I don't know if you know. Charles wrote The Ruby Racer, and it is a disaster. STANLEY: It's cool. It's a disaster. YEHUDA: So let me be clear. It's a great idea. I use it a lot, but it just fundamentally doesn't now work. Right? It fundamentally cannot -- you cannot embed two VGCs in the same process. BRANDON: Right. YEHUDA: Okay. BRANDON: This is the greatest moment in the history of our podcast. I just want to say that. CHARLES: No, I know. There's no way to collect…. YEHUDA: Yes, exactly. CHARLES: -- for example. YEHUDA: I was about to use cycles as an example. CHARLES: The APIs just don't exist. YEHUDA: Yeah, so basically cycles, so this is why. The reason why I feel strongly about this is that we use Rust for Skylight, which is our product. And we need to embed something, and I would never in a million years embed something with a garbage collector. And I think The Ruby Racer was a pretty good -- I think, for constrained cases, it works fine if you know what you're doing, but people basically tried to use it as, "Oh, I'm just going to write part of my program in JavaScript. And, by the way, both languages have closures, so good luck," basically. The Ruby Racer is cool, but I would not -- I don't think that that's the correct strategy for having long-running JavaScript programs like Ember, like complicated stuff like Ember. I think a better thing for people to do would be to figure out a simple IPC protocol so that they could run their Ember app and then have a simple way of talking over a socket or something with the node app, so booting up your Rails app will also boot up the node app. And, if necessary, and you're serving through your Rails app, you could communicate. TOM: I think, to be clear, the Ember app, even when running on the server, still talks to the database server using json, right? So it's the exact same data marshalling flow. It's just presumably it'll be a lot faster because probably your API server and your application server are in the same data…. YEHUDA: Well, at a minimum, it'll be a lot more consistent, right? TOM: Yes. YEHUDA: I think when people -- when Twitter complained about somebody from some country connecting and getting a really slow connection, the issue there was that they were downloading the app shell and then who knows how long it took to download the json payload, right? But if the json payload is coming from the same data center, then it's, by definition, going to be downed within some range, reasonable range. BRANDON: Okay. Awesome. I'd like to shift gears and spend a couple minutes talking about something that most of the questions that I had originally for this were actually answered in your talk. But I'd like to go over it just a little bit. You alluded earlier to the way that you're running Ember as an ideal, sort of your ideals, discovering your ideals about open source projects and the Indie Web. And I think it's a really important topic, and I want to ask a little bit about that because I don't think a lot of people understand this. I think, especially I see in the JavaScript community, a lot more people establishing open source projects that are corporate run and that being considered a benefit rather than a drawback. And I've seen you push back on that a little bit, and I wanted to ask you, Yehuda, about what your definition of the Indie Web is and why you specifically run the Ember project the way that you guy run it. YEHUDA: Sure. I think there are basically two parts of what it means to be Indie, and the second one sort of derives out of the first one, but I think it's -- you wouldn't necessarily arrive at it yourself, so I'll make it explicit. The first one is that you have a diversified core team. What I mean by that is essentially diverse in all the ways you could possibly think of, and things that I learned from other projects are, like, functionally diverse. So make sure that if there's a person on your team -- if there's a person around somewhere running your events or doing documentation or doing evangelism or running user groups, make sure that if there's a person who is very skilled at doing that that they are the top person on your team in charge of that. The counter, the alternative that I've seen a lot in the open source community is that the person running events essentially reports to the core team, right? There's a person who is maybe a professional event runner, and they are not in charge of events. They're in charge of coming up with ideas for events that they run by the core team, and the core team decides yes or no. The problem is the core team has no skills in doing that, so this person ends up spending huge amounts of time being frustrated trying to explain to the core team something or other, right? That would be the equivalent of somebody on the core team writing some area of code, having to come to the rest to the core team and talking about really tiny, nitty-gritty implementation details. Of course, unlike code where I think people have an intuitive sense that you're deep in the weeds of some performance thing, and I don't really understand that. In a lot of areas that are not code, code people have a very high sense of their own understanding, right? The core teams, I've seen a lot of core teams that people come and they say, well, I happen to know a lot about how people want to read docs in this country and so I'm going to help with the translation effort. All of a sudden the core team is an expert on, like, Indian documentation. And they have all these opinions that are totally unwarranted. Step one is have a functionally diverse group of people, and have people that are not necessarily hardcore coders, but are talented and professionals in their area. Have them do that work at the top level. And I spent a little time on this just now because I feel strongly that this is an area that people miss, and it's just an area that code people are too high on their own supply. They're too impressed with their own skills. They cause a lot of pain for the people who are good at areas that are not hard-core code, so that's one. Two is be diverse in terms of the set of people that own decision-making in your project, so this is what you were talking about with the company run open source, and this is something companies can do. I've seen, for example, I worked with the Rust Project, and the Rust Project originally started at Mozilla. But they've been spending tremendous amounts of effort to try to increase the set of people who are on the core team of Rust that are not working at Mozilla. And this is something that maybe takes a lot of effort once you have an established project at a company. There's all the internal company politics you have to deal with. But the reality is that if you have a project that's at one company, you're kind of at the whims and the mercies of that one company's how they do resourcing, whether they think it's important, what their actual goals are. Maybe the thing that they built the project for doesn't necessarily match what the community is doing, right? So become diverse in the companies that own it. I think projects like Rails, Postgres, Ember, increasingly Rust are good examples of this. And, of course, I mean the regular meaning of the word diverse here, just because if you become more diverse in all areas, you actually find yourself being more function diverse just because of who ends up being in what areas. You end up finding yourself having a lot better insight. You end up sitting in a room, and when there are people of diverse backgrounds, the kinds of questions that people ask. And I can only say this. This is the thing that I've noticed personally. It's not a thing that I can empirically measure. I've just noticed that the kinds of questions that people ask, when you're diverse in all kinds of ways, ends up being -- they end up being stronger, better, and they end up pushing back on the kinds of decisions that you can make as a monoculture with group think, right? The harder it is to have group think, the harder it is for everyone to sit around and say, "You know what we're going to do? We're going to rewrite everything," right? That kind of thing is hard to do when you have a lot of people with a lot of different backgrounds with a lot of different interests. So that's, I think, the higher order bit of what in the open source means is be very diversified in a lot of different ways. But there's a specific thing that I think comes out of it that is very important, which is to do the work that you're doing incrementally. Again, the reason I think that this is a derive is that if you have a lot of people with a lot of different interests with a lot of different projects, I think it becomes very difficult for you to do full on rewrites because everybody has interests, and maybe a few people are excited about doing a rewrite, but everyone else says, "Oh, my God. What about my app?" Then you have the docs guy saying, "Oh, my God. Now we have to maintain two sets of docs?" And you have the evangelism guy hearing all the pushback from the community about the rewrite. So it becomes very difficult for you to have this situation where you're not doing things incrementally. But I think, in my talk, I spend some time on what it means to do things incrementally and what the benefits are and how to adopt the six-week release cycle and all that. I talked about that in more detail because, even though I think it's a natural consequence of being diversified, it's also something that you have to think about if you want to do it well. BRANDON: Yeah. It seems to me that that would require, like it's kind of a chicken and egg deal, but to me it seems like there was a lot of discipline in switching to a six-week release cycle, and that's important. It seems, for us at least as consumers of Ember as an open source framework, that's benefited us greatly. We find the framework much, much easier to keep up with on the six-week release cycles than pretty much most other open source projects we've worked with. YEHUDA: Which is kind of like a paradox, right, because you expect that six-week release cycle means you can never keep up with it because it's always changing. But in fact, six-week release cycle means you don't have time to ever change that much. BRANDON: Well, and even for apps that go dormant for a while, we find that, okay; we'll bring it up to one. Bring it up to the next one. The upgrade path becomes extremely obvious. YEHUDA: Yep, exactly, and there's deprecation warnings, and there's ... I think people should watch my talk on this specific area because it took me 15 minutes or something to lay out the whole thing. But I think the basic idea of just doing things incremental, and incrementally has this bad sense. It's like, oh, maybe you're hunting for the local maximum or something. All I mean by incrementally is the same way that the human body replaces its cells, right? You don't do it all at once. Maybe over an extended period of time, the thing that you're looking at is completely different. But because you did it a little at a time, you were able to move the whole community together in the direction instead of people, many, many people getting left behind, which is what used to happen a lot with Rails. I think Rails has gotten better at this over time. But it used to happen, like Rails 3 came out and a lot of people were stuck on Rails 2.3. BRANDON: I think when people hear incrementally, they can think about possibly incrementally be led in circles, right? You could incrementally be every day wake up and decide to change one degree or the other. What matters is if you have a compass that's pointing somewhere. For the Ember project, that incremental stuff doesn't work unless it's pointed somewhere very clear. And you and Tom are basically the keepers of that vision. And I wanted to ask about that, what the vision of the framework is that keeps guiding everybody. Is it sort of implicit to the project? As you use it, you recognize it. Or is it something that you've explicitly outlined somewhere? YEHUDA: I'll take this for a second and then Tom can jump in. I think, fundamentally, the main vision is just we ultimately wanted to have a full stack solution that solved the majority, the vast majority of the problems that a regular person would have writing a Web app, but we knew from the beginning that if we tried to take on that whole project, I mean even Meteor, who took on that whole project, is still struggling to have to complete the vision. And they tried to sort of boil the ocean. And so, we knew from the beginning that we were going to get it wrong if we tried to do a CLI tool and a framework and a data library and all this stuff all at once. And so I think we started off with the V in MVC, basically, right at the beginning and added routing and other stuff over time. But the mission always has been to build the thing that's a full stack of what you need to build front-end tools. Tom, you can take it from there. TOM: Yeah. I think, in the JavaScript world, I think, because JavaScript for so long was treated as a toy language that people didn't do serious stuff in, it attracted a certain type of developer who is -- which is a totally legitimate opinion, but they tended to be kind of hackers who would do these one-off experiments. And because of that, the notion of convention over configuration and having shared solutions is still a somewhat surprisingly controversial opinion in the JavaScript community. And so I think the role, as you said, for Yehuda and I, is to basically be willing to stand up and take the tomatoes that get thrown at us and say, "You know what? No, there is benefit in having a shared solution, especially when it's not just one-off hackers in their basement, but when it's a team of engineers working at a company, and you have a product that you need to ship, and it needs to have good interaction. It needs to be done yesterday. Those people need tools too. People like that deserve tools." And I think that's our goal is to have a framework that will last for at least the next ten years that is willing to incorporate good ideas as they come out and as they're embedded, move the community together, as Yehuda was saying, but without chasing the hype dragon where every six months: "Throw away everything you know because the next big thing is coming out. Rewrite your apps." I see Ember as a way of kind of tempering that instinct for engineers to chase the new and shiny constantly in a way that basically we have a community that agrees together what the next big thing is, and then we start moving towards that. I think, right now, major things that we're thinking about are one server rendering, as we talked about. Getting the CLI tools in place, that's a thing that we've wanted for a long time. But as Yehuda said, we didn't want to try boiling the ocean. And then the new HTMLBars view layer, which unlocks a lot of the cool things that React is able to do around, like, DOM diffing and so on. YEHUDA: Yeah. I usually tell people -- recently, I've come to a line, which is, if you want to tell me that there's not a place for shared solutions in some area or some abstraction, I think the burden is on you, actually. I think people in the JavaScript community, and there's a small group in the Rails community that feels the same way, they assume that the burden is on the person who is trying to abstract, right? If there's a common problem that a lot of people have, they think it's your job to prove that abstraction is a good idea. I think it is your job to prove that a particular abstraction is a good idea. But I think my de facto, my default position is that if a lot of people are solving the same problem that there's a shared solution worth hunting for. And I would say the JavaScript community is really -- big chunks of the JavaScript community are pretty anti this approach. But I think it's really the only way that you could build -- like Tom said, the only way you could build projects with large teams is to have some sense of what the shared answer is and to not have it be some genius on the fourth floor somewhere that does everything. And if you want to make any changes, you have to go to them. I've seen a lot of companies that work like this, and it works fine. Anther facet of this is that pretty much every company deciding to adopt, like, Ember, Angular, React, or Backbone, whatever, they do like this "taste test," right? A taste test is like a two-week project where they see which one is faster. By definition, the taste test doesn't successfully analyze what happens over a longer period or when you have a bigger set of developers, right? It's by definition optimized for short projects with a small number of developers, and so -- TOM: And usually it's the guy on the fourth floor conducting the taste test. YEHUDA: He's either conducting it or he is actively attacking it, right? He is saying we should not -- for example, Firefox OS refused to adopt any framework for an extended period despite the complaints of many people on the Firefox OS team because of the fact that they had a religion against frameworks. They didn't like frameworks as a concept. I've heard this from large numbers of people working on the periphery of Firefox OS and many complaints, right? And so I think we, Ember, one of the things we had to learn was that we can't get away with just saying that. We can't get away with saying, oh, you'll learn. If you just use Ember for a year, you'll figure it out. We had to really improve the getting started experience. But I think, on the flipside of that, there's no way that we could ever -- even if we get to be as nice as to optimal getting started framework, getting started tool, we're always going to have benefits that are not part of that that are very difficult to see when you're doing a quick analysis. Actually, recently we've seen a lot more big companies come out and talk about the benefits of Ember for long-lived projects, and I think that helps a lot just having people testify that they used Ember for a year within a team that wasn't three people, and they found it to be productive in these specific ways. I think that's helped a lot of people feel comfortable. BRANDON: That's been my experience, certainly, as well, just seeing that increase. I think everybody should -- honestly, I believe everybody listening to this should drop what they're doing and go watch the Hack Summit talk. I thought it was phenomenal, and I think it made me think a little differently because it's a little confusing out there, like what some of the tradeoffs are in these open source projects that are run in that kind of echo chamber. And the fact that you guys work so hard to pierce the echo chamber is really cool. I know that there may be some technical questions. We don't get a chance to have you guys on the podcast very often, obviously, so I wonder if anybody has any more questions. STANLEY: Before we get back to technical questions, I just want to cut in and say I really like Yehuda's talk from Rails Conf as well. It was really eye opening for me as somebody new to the Rails community, even though Rails has been around for a while, and kind of understanding the value of shared solutions and kind of the philosophy behind that. YEHUDA: Yeah, that was definitely the first time I tried to formulate a general theory for what shared solutions look like and why they're good, and essentially why Rails hit the nail on the head with the right amount of shared solutions and where the experimentation is happening and all that stuff. STANLEY: Cool. Back to you, Charles. CHARLES: I just had a quick question I wanted, before we wrap up. I had another question about the server side rendering, kind of a general one. I know I've definitely been burned by server side rendering in the past, you know, because it's been something that people talk about on and off, it seems like, for the last five, six years. I remember when mustache first came out. The first time that I tried it, it's like, oh, I've got this templating thing that I can run inside on my Rail server, and I can run it. There's a JavaScript implementation too. One of the things that I found was I was able to get up running very quickly, but then I felt like I was eaten alive by the edge cases. It was actually -- I think it was a blog post that you wrote, Tom, where you were talking about kind of the justification for resolving, always resolving RSVP promises asynchronously. Because, to not do so, have a different context, different stack sitting on top of the resolution was like releasing Zalgo into your application. I actually, when I read that thing about promises, it actually made me harken back to my experience with server side rendering. I was like, oh, with server side rendering I was releasing Zalgo onto my client. I had a very different context. TOM: Yeah, the thing you're describing is sharing templates across two different apps, right? CHARLES: Right. TOM: The data model diverges, and then the things that you need diverge. That specifically is something that we are going to avoid. The idea isn't, oh, you can reuse your model on the server, and you reuse your templates on the server. The point is it's your app, the same exact app, same code base that you would run in the user's browser just happens to be running on the server. YEHUDA: And I think there's also -- I think there's another important point, which is that if you look at how people do SSR, I think historically people have said, "Well, I'm going to use a view layer that's very good at SSR." And then you would have this pile of hacks that was involved in booting up your app. Honestly, Ember, in the beginning, had piles of hacks used to booting up your app. I definitely remember that period. Now the view layer maybe is very good at running on the client server and, like you said, originally was just like the template. But now maybe the whole view layer is good at it. But now the process of actually booting things is a source of non-determinism. You're saying Zalgo. I'm saying non-determinism. Zalgo is a better word. CHARLES: [Laughter] YEHUDA: And Ember has definitely held off on tackling server side rendering seriously until we felt confident that we had the full stack handled. In other words that, as a framework, we had the whole lifecycle handled. Then actually, if you look at technically what we've been doing recently, a lot of it is like separating out. We have an application right now, an application only -- there's only ever one instance of it. Now we're saying, well, there could be multiple sessions. And so we're really looking at the whole lifecycle of the application and, because we own the whole lifecycle of the application, we can actually feel confident that the path that we're going through is correct, so that's one part of it. The other part of it is essentially what React figured out at a high level. I think what we're doing is equivalent, which is you don't necessarily assume that you got exactly the same thing on the client server because probably in practice there's always going to be some thing or other, like the clock case that Tom talked about, or the hello Yehuda case that I talked about before, the authentication case. What you do is you rerender the template, and you don't say if it's not exactly the same, throw it away and start over. You say parts that are the same you can keep, and parts that are different you replace. Therefore, it's not so much a whack-a-mole problem. It's more like how much replacement can I tolerate and have it not feel janky, right? So you go use it, and if you see that there's an area that's popping in and replacing, that's an area that you have to go and figure out so, first of all, it will work. Right? It will work. It will not be broken. It might feel a little bad, and that's an area for you to go and improve the Zalgoishness of your solution. In practice, in Ember, it will almost always be something weird like you're relying on a non-deterministic DOM API or something like this, or you're relying on some XHR that even though we serialized it, you're getting a push notification, and it's different, and it happens quickly, so it's janked. Right? I think the basic point of try to control everything and also only replace things that are needed will get you to a much better starting place out of the gate with Ember than you will have if you try to do the old solutions. It may turn out to be a lot of work. And if it turns out to be a lot of work regardless, then I think it will still, even with Ember, be a thing that is used by people who really need it and not so much by people who don't. But I'm hopeful that the fact that we own the whole lifecycle of your application will let it be useful for a bigger set of people than people who are desperately in need of it as a solution. BRANDON: Awesome, so I think we're going to wrap up. Is there anything you guys want to give a shout-out to or anyone? YEHUDA: Please sign up for Skylight to make your Rails apps faster. TOM: Yeah, please. Make my Christmas a merry one. YEHUDA: We didn't talk about this at all. TOM: And sign up for Skylight. YEHUDA: We didn't talk about this at all, but Tom and I, much of our day job is working on Skylight. And if you watched my talk at Hack Summit, one of the things that I advocate and I really feel it in my gut because of Skylight is I advocate spending, even if you're full time in open source, spending some time, even a day a week or two days a week, would help a lot working on something that you have to maintain over the long haul because, like I said before, maintenance over the long haul is very difficult for you to market. It's something that you have to feel in your heart. If you're working on an open source project, work on -- use it for a real thing that you spend significant time on that you have to maintain over the long haul so you could feel, in a year, whether you're practice is holding up to being maintainable. And, yes, now that I've talked about Skylight for a second, please sign up. This is how we fund our ability to do any open source. Working on Skylight has definitely been the most enjoyable thing I've done in my career so far in the sense that I've had a lot of control over it, but it's also the most harrowing in the sense that we are responsible for getting all the revenue, so please sign up. BRANDON: All right, well, thanks very much, you all, for coming on. Everybody, go sign up for Skylight. It's very cool, very beautiful, and very actionable insight for Rails apps. Tom, Yehuda, thank you so much for joining us on this. It's been super enlightening. Again, everybody, please go watch Yehuda's talk on keeping the Web Indie. And if you've got a little extra time, the Rails Conf talk on layers of abstraction is also, I found, something that changed my views on a lot of stuff as well. Thanks again, both of you all, for coming on. YEHUDA: Thanks a lot. TOM: Thank you, guys. BRANDON: All right, talk to you later. CHARLES: Thank you, guys.