Podcasts about united states well

Your parents told you that you could be the President of the United States. Well, you probably can't. But that's O.K. if you practice "Low Anthropology."

Show NotesHave you ever wanted to buy a van, hit the road and travel the United States? Well, that's just what YoungWa decided to do. She moved to Austin from Seattle two years ago. YoungWa grew tired of corporate life and decided to make a life change. Using her savings, she bought a Storyteller Overland van and started making plans. In late October 2020, YoungWa and her dog, Kimchi, started out on their new RV adventure. Kimchi is the cutest Australian Cattle Dog you've ever seen. You can find him on Instagram and YouTube. Check out YW & K-Dawg I met YoungWa at an Austin Podcasters meetup in January 2020. She is the creator and host of A & E with YoungWa, an unniche podcast. Her Anything & Everything podcast 'explores inspirational stories, love and relationships, vulnerabilities, health, science, politics, conspiracy theories, and anything else that impacts society.' You can find YoungWa's podcast on YouTube and all the podcast streaming platforms.

This episode was recorded in our Dad Chat community on May 21st. To join our community, simply visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/2588452764585629 and ask to join! You can also check out our new Dad Chat YouTube Channel to see the video of our episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB9bhuiGBOThXnmlmEVWVRgSadly, we are still in quarantine, but that leaves us plenty to talk about the ongoings in the world, including : * Zoom Parties are not the same as real-life parties. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/zoom-parties-virtual-gatherings_n_5ebd7063c5b635d6a6d160fc* Ms. Monopoly. Finally, a game that mansplains how to make money as a woman in the world.https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/05/i-played-ms-monopoly-board-game-feminism/611725/* Kanye. Bodyguards. Insanity. Enjoy. https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephenlaconte/kanye-west-bodyguard-kim-kardashian-paparazzi-interview- Do your kids have a favorite? They probably do, and that's ok. https://theweek.com/articles/915007/why-kids-have-favorite-parentWe also shared some of our favorite YouTube Channels that you might want to check out. * Jelle's Marble Runs. Racing with marbles, color commentary, and a great way to pass the time. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYJdpnjuSWVOLgGT9fIzL0g* DALLYMYD, the modern-day treasure hunter who finds lost iPhones, jewelry, computers, go pros, and more…and also tries to return the recovered items to their owners. https://www.youtube.com/user/DALLMYD* Caspar Babypants and a video starring Matt's kid Nate! Remember Presidents of the United States? Well, the lead singer started a kids group and makes songs that even us parents will like. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=caspar+babypantsCatch Nate Goldfarb's fan video https://youtu.be/Do-VuU3fVM0* Dude Perfect. Some awesome dudes are doing cool stuff. https://www.youtube.com/user/corycotton* Screen Junkies, home of Honest Trailers. Excellent movie summations with some severe snarkhttps://www.youtube.com/user/screenjunkiesAs always, please send your thoughts, love and hate mail, and articles you want to discuss in the next episode of Dad Chat by sending an email to greg@ambitious.com or sending a text to 321.351.3363.Check out our new venture, Profits, and Playgrounds and find out how you can get our Level-Up Planner for just $10 with free shipping. www.profitsandplaygrounds.comDon't forget to subscribe, and please screenshot this episode and share it on social media. We're here to make a difference, and the more dads we reach, the better. Help us give today's modern entrepreneurial dads a voice to help them take over the world and get home in time for dinner. Please stay safe. Practice Social Distancing. And for god's sake, wash your hands. Until Next time…#dadchat http://Instagram.com/gregrolletthttps://instagram.com/msgfarb

Welcome! Good morning, everybody. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning and we discussed what Iran is threatening and how likely they are to succeed and what small businesses need to do to protect themselves. So, here we go with Mr. Polito. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com ---  Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Hey, good morning, everybody. It's kind of a somber day today. Everything that Iran has threatened to do to the US and other countries along with those they have perpetrated, of course, for a long time. But the cyber attacks that started ramping up in 2012, we started having some warnings about this whole thing. Excuse me back in November of last year, 2019. And, man, I'm already your head. And we're right now we have even more warnings about so we got to understand this stuff, and that's what I talked to Jim Polito about this morning. It is essential if you think that you are not at risk you are, and I talked a lot about that with Jim this morning. Make sure you are on my email list as well and be doing more free pieces of training. And you'll find all of that just by going to Craig Peterson dot com, you should be able to sign up there, or Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, so let's get into it right now. I talked with Jim exclusively about Iran, what are they capable of and what's going on over there? Here he is no time like the present to have a tech talk guru Craig at your side, you know, we've got a random threatening cyber attack. Or we've got an analyst saying that it's likely that Iran really can't do anything conventional in terms of warfare, but maybe they can carry out cyber attacks. Joining us right now is the man who is the armor of the United States when it comes to any cyber attacks, our good friend, and Tech Talk Guru Craig Peterson. Good morning, Craig. Hey, good morning, Jim. I'm doing well. And yeah, this is a little scary. Yeah, it is. So So why don't you lay it out for us? You know, there's a lot of other things we could have discussed on the consumer front things, there's always time for those. I think it's best to take your time today and get this analysis from you. What are they capable of doing? What do you think they'll do? If they are to attack? What are they interested in? What does it mean for the average person? I mean, I loaded up your plate there. I think it's time for us to dive in. Absolutely. Well, there there's a lot here to be worried about. It's a very legitimate worry. There are a lot of people out there right now who say that if this turns into a kinetic war, in other words, if shots are being fired, it would make the whole Iraq conflict look like a walk in the park. Because, of course, Iran does have a lot of military armaments. Let's talk about the cyber side because that's kind of where I come in. They have already fired a shot in that war. I've been saying for a long time that World War three shots have been fired, and it is in the online space. Tehran is widely considered to be one of the world's most malicious online actors. We have kind of a list. There's about four or five of them out there. You've got Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea, but one of Iran's specialties, and all of this is something that's called a wiper attack. Now you're familiar with ransomware and ransomware attacks. That is where some malware arrives onto your computer, it goes ahead and encrypts everything on the laptop so so that you can read it, they can use it anymore, and then it pops up a screen saying, hey, pay up. A wiper attack has a similar Our outcome gym, and a wiper attack gets onto your computer and erases everything. So you no longer have access to any of your data. But now what's happened is, there's no ransom to pay. There's no chance of getting your data back. There was a vast, massive hack against the Saudi Arabian oil. The Saudi Arabian oil companies called Saudi Aramco, was not only attacked but to had 30,000 of their Computers, wiped, It was a big deal there. Wow. 30,000 Wow. So, the Iranians are not interested in doing what the Eastern European hackers do, which is to get money out of us. Iranian hackers want mayhem, and that means wiping out all your data. Absolutely. And you remember Sheldon Adelson. And of course, he's the guy that owns Las Vegas Sands. Iran attacked him. And that attack was because he was supporting President Trump. He's a conservative, libertarian guy. So now we have the Defense Intelligence Agency warning late last year about what Tehran was trying to do and their military goals and intentions, including in cyberspace. So let's talk about why does it matter to me, Saudi Aramco huge companies lots of money, how would attacking them hurt the United States? Well, of course, they expected the price of oil to go way up. For that to hurt the US but because of President Trump allowing fracking encouraging drilling, of course, the cost of oil hardly went up at all. Right now, it's back down to the same prices this morning. It's like $52 a barrel that we saw before any of these conflicts going on. But let's talk about your business and my business. Yeah, a business, a small business here in the United States that has a wiper attack, 20% of them will file for bankruptcy the very next day. Wow. Those that don't file for bankruptcy the next day, 60% of small businesses that are the victims of ransomware attacks and wiper attacks, remember that's what Iran is doing. 8% of those small business small-medium companies will be out of business in six months. So what we're looking at here, Jim, is that if you want it successful in going after our companies in the United States. And nothing is suggesting they won't be successful. Because so many businesses aren't doing the right things for their security. They could have a significant impact on us here in the United States by shutting down our SMBs are small, medium businesses, who are the source number one creator of jobs here in the United States. I want to point out one other thing real quick here, Ars Technica, you know, and they publish a big website, online. Annually they release a Death Watch, where they list the businesses that are going to die this year. On this year's Death Watch is Symantec. Symantec, you know the guys that make Norton. Yeah, they're on the Deathwatch. Why? Because their stuff doesn't work. That's true of 99% of what you'll see in the stores. It doesn't work. My prediction Iran is going to be successful. The only thing that's going to hold them back from having massive wiper attacks, which the FBI and Homeland Security are warning us about, is that Iran doesn't have enough people working in cyber operations to shut down our whole economy. We're talking with our good friend, Craig Peterson Tech Talk Guru about the cyber threat from Iran. So, Craig, it appears to me that, you know, the big worry everyone has, What about our utilities? What about the, you know, our banking? What about all these big systems? It appears to me from what you're saying. Those are relatively well-armored. The problem is, the small business isn't. And if you can go after enough of them, it can be close to as devastating as shutting down, say, your electrical grid or our internet. It can be just as devastating. It may take longer, as you said, and more people are going after individual small businesses, but it can be just as devastating. You're right. These people have gone after the federal government. There was a website taken offline here on Sunday because it had a picture of an Iranian flag and a bloodied President Trump punched in the face. That was a small site, the federal depository library program. Okay, you're right. These banks that are here in the US are quite well protected. I helped them put together some of that protection many many years ago. Go protecting all of the credit card transactions here in the United States, the company that number one provider of credit card transactions. So I know these guys at the banks are well protected. Many of our, our government agencies are well protected. And you know that I, for two years, I did the webinar training for the infragard program, which are people who are responsible for private sector infrastructure security. So, I have some knowledge of this stuff. So they're well protected, and which isn't to say that they're not going to get somebody to click on something that they shouldn't click on, and then cause problems but they are well protected. It's a small-medium business space. It's the heartbeat of American business, the creator of jobs, that is really at risk here. Iran, as I said, I don't think they have the people that they need to devastate the United States and our industries our small-medium businesses. However, remember at the top I mentioned, other countries involved in this sort of thing over the years, those include China, Russia, and North Korea. North Korea has caused problems. China and Russia, if they were mad, could devastate our economy without firing a single shot. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, though, what's interesting is that, like the cold war between the Soviet Union, you know, the United States and China, there was mutually assured destruction. So, the Soviets knew, okay, if we launch missiles at them, they'll launch rockets at us. Don't the Chinese know now, okay. If we make a cyber attack against the United States, they're going to make a cyber attack back, and you have the deterrent, which is mutually assured destruction, even though the Chinese would say during the Cold War? Well, if you launch all your missiles at us, they'll still be 500 million of us left. You know we'll wipe out more of you, then you'll wipe out of us. But isn't there isn't they're kind of the mutually assured destruction right now that keeps the peace between US and China. You are dead-on as usual, Jim. Under President Obama, he started to beef up our cyber counter-attack force if you will. President Trump has taken that to the next level in a massive way. Where we now have in place offensive cyber attack capabilities. So that is the primary reason that no one has come after us in the cyber realm. Look at what we were able to do with our partner Israel to the Iranian nuclear program. That was all done through a cyber attack. We shut the silly thing down. And they know we will come after them. And if anything, I think Jim, you've hit the nail on the head again, that is the primary reason behind them not coming after us in a huge way, but they have been coming after us. And let since last fall, I have seen the results of some of these wiper attacks. And they've been kind of nipping at our heels. But if they are upset that, you know, when it comes to war, you throw everything you can, when you're down on the ground and beaten bloody. They're not there right now. But every business out there, man, you've got to pull up your socks. Make sure you are on my email list because I'm going to be doing some more free pieces of training, and these are real training, right? I'm not sitting there selling you. I'm in on for an hour, and I'm teaching you things you need to know and do and giving you actionable items. So get on my email list right now because this is free. Hey, if you wanted to hire me What the heck, right? But I want to get that message out just like I did for the FBI infragard program for two years. That's an entire volunteer position. But you must do that. You can do that just by visiting my website at Craig Peterson dot com. And of course, Jim, we went overtime again. No, but you can also text My name to Craig Peterson by texting the name Jim J-I-M to this number 855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553 standard data and text rates apply. You heard it right there. There's a lot of other things we could have discussed with Craig Peterson, but this was the most necessary for small businesses. They're the ones that need to worry, Craig, as usual, awesome segment. I love talking with you. We will catch up with you next Tuesday. All right. Thanks again, Jim. Take care. Thank you, Craig Peterson. Everybody. I encourage you to do that. Again, standard data and text rates apply. It's always great to be on his mailing list. Now I am because I do the show here. But I'm also part of that mailing list when there's an alert. He sends it out. He's not looking to sell you anything. He's not looking to sell your name. Craig does this out of the goodness of his heart. It's a great segment. Okay, when we return a final word. Transcribed by https://otter.ai ---  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson  

Merry Christmas! We're off for the holidays so we've released two of our Patreon episodes from Extra Extra Hot Great!EEHG 014We're hopping in our time machines to imagine what an EHG main episode might look like...in 1999. It's all sequels and prequels in scripted content these days and hey, we're no different, so: What's the main topic on the podcast in a 1999 episode? What is everyone talking about for Around The Dial? What would we put up for the Canon, and who's Winning and Losing? And how the hell are we going to watch that new episode of Twin Peaks when our VCR crapped out and Netflix is decades away?EEHG 030Previously, we imagined what an EHG would have looked like in 1999. Today, we're going back even further — to 1969. It was a big year in the news, and we're probably all well sick of retrospectives on Manson and the moon landing...but what was going on in TV-land in these fractured United States? We'll each propose main topics for a 1969 podcast; our Around The Dial, Canon, and Winner/Loser candidates; and possible celebrity guests.DISCUSSIONTalk about this episode on its dedicated page on ExtraHotGreat.comTweet at us @ExtraHotPodcast on TwitterWe are @ExtraHotGreat on Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome!   Today there is a ton of stuff going on in the world of Technology and we are going to hit a number of topics from Facial Recognition, Hacks, Cyber Insurance, Privacy, and CyberSecurity Legislation, Incident Response, Warnings about Smart TV's and monitoring your pets.  It is a busy show -- so stay tuned. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: The Convenience of Facial Recognition is not All Its Cracked up to be   Call 611 Now -- Hackers Breach 1M Cellular Customers January’s Coming - Do You Have An Incident Response Plan? Protecting Company Assets and Cybersecurity Insurance Peeping on Toms Last Generation Legislators Trying to Solve Next-Generation Security Issues Block 90 percent of Malware with this Smart TVs, Security, and the FBI Apple:1 Android:120 --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson 0:05 Hello everybody, Craig Peterson here on WGIR and WGAN and other stations. I am and FM still shout-out to everybody. Thanks for joining me today and deciding to spend a little bit of your Saturday with me. Hey, if you are new to the show a real quick introduction I've been in the technology field for many decades. I have been doing internet work in fact, since the early 80s helped to develop a lot of the systems some of which are still in use today. And I have been a victim of security problems with my business. I built a big business it was doing pretty well technically a small business, but it was doing pretty well had 50 employees and then we got nail now this was way back in the 90s. But when we got into Nailed, I had quite the wake-up call about what I really should be doing. And, and, man, it was scary. It was really, really scary at the time I owned our own building, we had our own data center. We were building some of the biggest commercial properties on a line on the Internet at the time. And it was a really scary thing. Craig Peterson 1:26 It was like, you know, the bully in the yard right at school, and they would suck you right in the solar plexus right in the gut, right. And that feeling that you had you just you couldn't breathe, the not really pain, but it was just shocking. And that's how I felt. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to do it. We had anti-virus software. Why didn't it protect us and it really bothered me and took a couple of days now. I was very, very technical. Well, of course, I still tend to be if I have a real failure it is that it's kind of hard to remember what it was like not to know any of this stuff. So you know, bear with me asking me questions. Okay, I get it right. I can be very confusing sometimes. But I was very technical. And it took about two days for me now this is back of course before Google or AltaVista, or any of these really great search engines. So I was using the stuff at the time, like our chain Veronica gopher stuff, and trying to find out what was going on. It was actually digging into the machine itself, that revealed what the problem was, and I'd become a victim of what's known as the Morris worm, crawling through my machines and some other machines on the internet. It was a really scary time, and I decided right then and there that I had to make cybersecurity priority, and I had to be able to help people with their cybersecurity and businesses as well. Now businesses you hope can afford to pay and keep my lights on, right. And they've been very good to me my clients over the years, you know, I've had some great clients. And I've decided at this point in my life that I only want to work with great clients only clients that really, really want to work with me. But the same can't be said for consumers because you retirees and other people just don't have the money to pay what it costs to secure a business. You know, it kind of at a minimum, you're talking about $50,000 investment, plus monthly and 2500 bucks a month is pretty standard. And you could certainly go out and hire somebody to have somebody who's a quote it person unquote, but they are not really going to be able to help you out very much and they not going to keep up with it. And that's the biggest problem we have right now. My people who are involved in this every day, spend about a third of their time in classes. And in coaching and conferences trying to keep up with what are the attacks? What is the best software out there, what you're doing, you're using, what are the techniques that we need to use nowadays. And so you as a home user, there's no way you can afford it. And as a business user, if you're running a Soho like a small office, Home Office, you cannot afford to do all of the right things. And that's what I'm trying to help out with. And that's why we talk a lot about security here on the show, and that's why I do pop up training and Facebook Lives where we kind of delve into one aspect or more. And then I have paid courses as well, that tells you what the tools are, how to use the tools where you can get the tools what are the best ones my newsletter we talked about that a bit. Craig Peterson 5:02 In fact, if you got this money as a newsletter, we add a new section. And actually we have a new section that we're probably going to do this monthly, but it is the number one through five things patches you need to apply. Here are the five things you absolutely have to take care of when it comes to patching this month because there are extreme vulnerabilities and they are being used by the bad guys right now. I can't think of anything more valuable if you guys can let me know. For everybody, whether you are big business, a small business, a home user, right it, make sure these have been applied or you could be in a whole lot of trouble. And now we're looking at the costs of recovering from one of these breaches and a very large percentage of businesses today. They're breached, they file bankruptcy the next day. Because that's how bad it's gotten and ransomware attacks are up, and they're up across the board no longer they necessarily aiming primarily at these real big companies because they realize the smaller guys are the ones that are going to be easier to compromise. And then when you add into that equation, the fact that it takes about eight months for a company to notice that it has been hacked. Wow, think of the damage one of these guys could do. And it's everything from stealing the intellectual property that you've developed and designed. We have another client that we picked up, and she has a business that was a cutthroat. I had no idea how crazy cutthroat it is. She's in the design business for clothing. And purses, women's wear shoes, various other things. And in this whole design thing that she's doing, there is quite a bit of money and she had been selling into these huge retailers and things are going really well. And, you know, maybe one of these days we'll get deeper into that story. But this is just a couple of weeks ago, I met with her and she lost everything. And now at what, how old is she now? 55 I think, or 50. She's starting over again, from scratch and I don't want that to happen. Craig Peterson 7:40 So the easiest, simplest, most straightforward and free thing you can do, frankly, is to subscribe to my newsletter. Now you're going to go to Craig Peterson comm slash subscribe, and I'm asking for your name and your email. That's all I'm asking, for now. I don't hound you, I'm not like one of these internet marketers that sending you emails every day multiple sometimes, unless I've got something that's big going on, like there's a training or something, I might send you emails during the week. reminders, hey, I'm starting this afternoon or whatever, right? That's the only time you're going to get a bunch of emails from me. And that's for the free training as well as some of the paid ones. But I am I don't sell your name. I am not trying to target you or anything else, right. So if you subscribe, you will get my weekly newsletter. And in that newsletter, I have usually between eight and 10 articles, we tend to write a short article that few paragraphs long kind of describing what the problem is, what you need to do give you some tips on what to do about it. And then we will link also to a third-party article, you know, unlike Forbes magazine, or so Newspaper out there, etc. Dark Reading is another one that we get, we linked to quite a bit. But you get all of that there is no charge for any of this. I don't want you to feel like I did. And I got hit once that first time and I got hit once again a few years later completely different way. And that's when I decided, hey, listen to this, this low-end antivirus firewall thing that you buy at Staples or from one of these brake fix shops, it doesn't really know much about it. It just isn't going to cut it so I upped my game after that. But you are going to understand what you should do how you should do it. My recommendations I throw those in there once in a while if somebody comes out with a new product, as we did with Wi-Fi here recently, and with some of the new Wi-Fi technology, what you should be looking for there and segmenting Your network at your home or your small business, so that your kids playing games who might be hacked, are not going to affect your main network, they're not gonna be able to get onto your computer, they're not gonna be able to get on your business computer, none of that stuff. But the only way you're going to find out about this is if you subscribe. Now, I have hundreds and hundreds, probably 1000 recommendations from people who just really appreciate all of this stuff that I'm doing. And, you know, there's free stuff, hey, if you can afford it, I'd appreciate it if you get the paid stuff because, you know, there's more, it's better because you can afford to pay for it right? But I really don't hold anything back. Right? I'm not trying to play secrets. It's the type of software you use as a business. That for instance has some sort of a military subcontract, you have defiers ITR regulations or a doctor's office where you got HIPAA regulations. Or a business that has to deal with FINRA or PCI regulations, financial transactions and companies. Those guys hopefully have enough money to do it mostly right. And as I said it, it gets expensive. We were just in a company we did a proposal, just a What about a month ago, I guess now, and to secure her stuff properly, would cost her about 80,000 a year. Now she had a number of employees but she decided she wouldn't, didn't want to pay it wouldn't couldn't whatever. And you know, I understand that too. But your best free advice you're going to get by going to Craig peterson.com slash subscribe, and I will be sending you my newsletter and I have three special things that you're going to get as well. That will come in the email after you confirm your subscription So you subscribe, look for my email, click the link, and you're all set. So I want to talk right now about what to do after the fact. If you've been hacked, what are the right things to do? Craig Peterson 12:17 Well, there are some things that you can do right away. I remember back in the day if you noticed that your machine and this is true today, it has run somewhere and is doing something odd, the best thing to do is shut it off. And then have somebody take that disk and put it on another machine that can analyze it, not just a regular machine. You don't want to spread that ransomware but an analysis machine uses Knoppix or one of these other tools in order to have a look at it. But if you're a company, what do you do if you're an individual, what do you do? A lot of people turn to insurance in order to cover it. You may not be aware of it, but your homeowners and Sharon's may have a writer that covers cyber intrusions, on your computers. And if you're a business person, you probably have already purchased some sort of a cyber insurance policy. That makes a whole lot of sense, frankly. But it can be a requirement for your company as well to have cyber insurance. So I've got five things to know right now, about cyber insurance because the attacks are increasing. It's becoming more and more important for companies to protect themselves. And cyber insurance may not cover you. And I have seen quite a number of times where companies This is in the news, I think, goodness, I don't have personal experience with this. But in the news, I've read articles where companies filed for their cyber against their cyber insurance policy and the policy didn't payout. Right now in the news, there's a big story about a large company that going to sue their insurance company because they wouldn't pay out all of the money that the company thought should be paid out. Now, in this case, we're talking about cyber insurance. That said, Hey, you have to take reasonable steps. Now with the cyber insurance that we have. So for instance, depending on the level of service you have from us, we have a policy underwritten by Lloyds of London, whereby if you are compromised, well, we're taking care of your systems. There is I think it's a million dollars worth of insurance, so it'll cover the smaller businesses typically. And then hopefully you have your own cyber insurance, right? That's how this whole thing works. And then, of course, our company we have our general insurance is our liability and All of this stuff you would expect to have the right key man type stuff, etc. But since the cyber attacks are now a top business concern, we're seeing numbers from Microsoft that found that cyber attacks beat out economic uncertainty, brand damage and government regulation as the top concerns for business owners and C level executives. So if you're sitting on the board of a company or you're sitting on the board of a nonprofit that you're trying to help out with, this is something that should be big on your mind. I did a presentation for university, about insurance, cyber insurance, how it all works, what the problems are, today, and let me tell you, they were very, very interesting. I think that's good 47% of the organizations that were surveyed said they have cyber insurance now. So that's good. That's pretty much half of all organizations say that they have it, which is up a lot. It's up 15% in the last couple of years. They're figuring that by next year, the gross written premiums for cyber insurance is expected to be around $8 billion. So a lot of companies signing up for it. 57% of companies with revenues of more than $1 billion had a cyber insurance policy. Now compare that to 36% of companies with revenues less than 100 million. And if you get down to the small guys, less than a million dollars in revenue, we're talking a number in the teens, percentage-wise of businesses that have cyber insurance. So if you don't have cyber insurance, you're not alone. Hey, that's for certain. But the big problem I think you're going to face is, if you do get hacked, how are you going to survive? I mentioned earlier that it's about I think this just takes about 20%. It's a pretty large number of businesses that get hacked, filed for bankruptcy the next day. But the majority of businesses that get hacked, are bankrupt within six months. So keep that in mind. Can you afford to lose the business? Is your business your retirement? Do you hope to sell it or maybe milk it is a cash cow for years to come? Big Questions, good questions. And if you do what's going to happen if you lose that income, because the business has gone under because you lost your client lists your production schedule, your bank account information, your intellectual property, very, very big deal and it's a very, very special Everything to okay. The top risk covered by cyber insurance seems to be a business email compromises. And that's actually kind of a good thing. Because according to the FBI, we're talking over $20 billion. And I've seen numbers, as high as $30 billion has been lost to these email scams. So business email compromise is where the fraudsters and maybe we can go into this in more detail some time, but it's where the fraudsters get involved and a trick you or somebody in your organization to sending the money. And you might say, Oh, it's not gonna happen to me. It'll ever happen to me. We're not that stupid when people pay attention to the email. No, it happens because the fraudsters aren't just sending out an email saying I'm a Nigerian prince. I need to use a bank account. They have done some research on you. They've done some research on your business. They know enough to be able to fool your financial people into sending money. And one of the stories I tell pretty frequently when I am last few months here while I'm doing presentations for businesses and other organizations have to do with that exactly. It has to do with the $45 million that was stolen out of an operating account. I have another one that's a much smaller business that came to us and we're securing them right now. And they lost $80,000 out of their operating account and to them. That's a lot of money. How are you going to meet payroll if you don't have that money sitting there? so busy mail compromise, good insurance to have. But here's a big concern. We have two big companies out there we've got drugmaker, Merck, you probably know about those guys. And a food giant called Mandela's They're both suing their insurance providers over non-payment for damages from not pet shop back in 2017. Craig Peterson 20:12 So think about that, Not Peyya was considered by many insurance companies as an act of war. And we think better, we're able to protect all of our customers from that. But these big companies weren't protected. I think they've retired us they would have been but you know, they know better, right? But think of you as a small business, or as a just a homeowner, how are you going to be able to fight these big insurance companies? Merck and Mondelez are both suing their insurance companies because the policies weren't paid. So keep an eye on that one as well. Hey, one of the things I had planned on doing and I may still do is Little free of pop up training on DNS filtering now you know, what is that? What's that all about? Basically, this is how you can defeat the bad guy's use of a key and critical internet resource. Now they're using DNS in order to mess with us. They use DNS when they have ransomware. The wants to call home. They use DNS when they have a botnet that needs to call home. So your computer might be unbeknownst to you may be used by nation-states like our friends in Russia, or China or Iran or North Korea. It may be used unbeknownst to you your computer to attack the Kremlin or the White House or the Department of Defense can be used to attack businesses, other innocent people in their homes. And the only way it can really do this is with a lot of coordination. And that's what a button that is all about. That's what the coordination is all about. And if you have ransomware, and if they want to make any money at all, they need to be able to tell you how to decrypt your files that were taken ransom. Now the ransomware guys don't always give you a good key. In fact, FBI numbers show that even if you pay the ransom, there's only a 50% chance that you'll get all of your files back. which is you know, it's too bad. Too bad. So sad. But that is the way it is. Because they are calling home they may not have called home properly. They might not have the right keys. You can contact the tech support people actually the ransomware guys, their tech support departments to tend to be better than many of the tech support departments that we have here when you call first software you bought right? But anyhow be that is it may I put together a special on how you can for free and basically in less than 90 seconds, how you can improve your security on your computer. Whether you are a small business or a home user, how you can secure your computer improve your security by 90% that is a very, very big number and I know you know Craig God really 90% Yes, really 90% because this technique, although it only takes you 90 seconds is probably gonna take you 10 minutes to sort of put together but this technique now allows you to basically stop ransomware in its tracks and stop some of the busiest compromised stuff in its tracks, which is huge right now, especially if you're a business and also stops your computer from being used as part of a botnet. It's huge, right? We're talking about some very big stuff here. And you can do it for free. Now we have software that we sell, a monthly basis per-seat basis. Actually, it's a per user basis. You know, it varies but gives-or-take 20 bucks a month that does basically the same thing. It has more features, it gets updated more often there are a number of different differences for it, but you can get it for free. And so I go into some depth on and it's, it's about a 10-minute episode that you'll find up on my website at Craig peterson.com. If you have a hard time finding it, you can always email me just me at Craig Peterson calm and I Walk through the whole thing with you. Okay, we obviously don't have time today. I have three minutes left today. Craig Peterson 25:06 So we're not going to get into that. But it's really a very big deal. You'll also find if you go to my website, I've got some additional podcasts here. Congress is finally tackling privacy next week, the Senate's going to take it up. And so I talked a little bit about that, how it's gonna affect your cybersecurity, a very cool little robot. You know, I'm always dripping on robots, but a cool little robot for your cat. If you're a business person, this is critical, but I also talked about it from a homeowner standpoint, what do you need to do when it comes to cybersecurity insurance and I go through some scenarios of what has actually been happening out there in the world today, how to protect yourself after t mobile's big data breach that nailed me as well. I go into some detail about why I opt-out of facial recognition. And I think that you should too, it's becoming more common and it does make some things a little easier. And there are times when using facial recognition is actually a plus. And so I discuss those as well. Craig Peterson 26:18 And Samsung, man, Craig Peterson 26:20 I'm, I'm sorry, but I really ripped on Samsung. And Android, frankly, went into a lot of the reasons why I say you should never ever, ever use Android. And there are some excellent reasons not the least of which is Apple releases a security update and it releases a security update for iPhones within usually a week or two of the security problem being found. And then it's available for everyone who owns an iPhone, the very next day. That's how fast it is. Samsung, not so much you can take the better part of a year to get the security updates for your Samsung android phone and can take even longer. If you don't have a Samsung, you have another manufacturer. Now some manufacturers are better Samsung's actually one of the worst when it comes to security updates. But right now, Android devices, if you bought a brand new one, and you updated it, there are over 100 pre-installed security risks right there in Android. So I go into a lot of detail on this. It's the holiday shopping season. I go into how to buy or how to even get an iPhone for free, and how to buy them inexpensively and which models you should look at which is another big deal because Apple fully supports these phones for at least five years. Samsung, who's the biggest Android manufacturer only supports it for two. Yeah. Anyways, all of that and more. Make sure you visit me online Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and you'll get all of this for free. Take care, everyone. Craig Peterson 0:03 Hey, welcome back. Craig Peterson here, WGAN, Hey, I'm already getting, getting some feedback here about my last statement. So let's straighten this out. I understand why a lot of people do buy Samsung, you know, I get it, right. It's something that I've thought about over the years I've had issues with over the years as well in it, it kind of goes back to what to buy when it comes to technology period, right. And I have always been the type that says, get the best that you can afford to buy. Don't cheap out because you will save a lot of money in the long run. If you can afford that. You know that purchase price. You're going to save money because the equipment can last longer. So for instance, just this week, we have a client that decided that they were going to go and because they had had a problem with a Dell computer that they had purchased at just retail, regular old consumer Dell. So they had had a problem with that they didn't want to buy anymore now they're going to go by HP, but they went ahead and bought another HP consumer-grade computer. Now that according to the statistics that are out there, the average consumer-grade laptop and that's what they bought last about seven months. So you pay 700 bucks for a no half-decent, pretty crappy consumer-grade laptop. Versus let's say that they got what re recommended which was a commercial DELL LAPTOP or maybe even an HP, HP enterprise laptop and you may not be aware of it. But Hewlett Packard split into and they have the consumer division that just costs reduces things. You know, they'll save a half a cent on a component by putting in something that's cheaper and crappier. Right, they don't care. And then they have their HP enterprise, which makes equipment for businesses completely different companies now, okay, they were split off, because there's no money to be made in that consumer space because it frankly, it's a race for the bottom. So they decided, hey, listen, we don't like Dell because the low-end Dell that we bought broke, well, yeah, on average, not just Dell, but across the industry. 7% they won't last seven months, okay, seven months is average. And it was I think $100 more for the computer that we recommended. That came with a three-year warranty that had better components in it and everything else right, that a hundred bucks, really makes a huge difference. But they decided they wanted to quote save money and quote right and What does it cost? So for instance, we, we ended up lending them a DELL LAPTOP. And that DELL LAPTOP that we lent them was at least five years old, maybe six years old. And it's still working. Because it's a commercial-grade laptop, it's not a consumer. It's not what you buy at Walmart. It's not what you can buy at Best Buy or staples. It is a commercial-grade laptop. And as a general rule, if you're a really small business and you want a commercial-grade, you'd either have to go to a company like us, or you could buy Apple if Apple's gonna work for you. So let's look at the apple stuff. So the apple laptop might cost you two or $3,000. You can get them for now right now about $800 for a little air, which is about the same price as you'd pay for one of these consumer-grade Dells or HP's. But you go ahead and you buy one of those apples. I have Apple computers that are 10 years old. We're still using. Okay, laptops included. So let's add up the numbers here. Let's say they only last five years for that Apple Computer. When is the breakeven point? Well, at about 18 months, and then for the next three and a half years, you have a free computer. That also works really well because Apple is not making major cuts in the quality of the components that you have. So, where I come in to understand this is I know personally in my business, I spend as much as I can on technology. But I do cut some corners sometimes, right? You look at it, and you say, Well, let me see. I can buy this laptop. It's a third of the price. So I can buy three of these laptops. Instead of buying one of those more expensive laptops. Right. I know you I know. You thought the same thing, right? Because I think of that too. That's what I do. So you look at it and you say, Well, I could buy three of these, yeah, but you're not going to have a machine that's still it's going to last it and you won't be able to buy three of those other computers, they just aren't going to last. And you're going to have to move all of your data when that computer fails, if you can move it if what fails isn't the SSD, because, for instance, now SS DS are not created equally. And these are the drive solid-state drives that replace the spinning drives that are in our computers. And they have a limited number of write cycles. In other words, they have a predetermined life factor. We could tell you a story about that, that we won't right now. There are some that just completely die after a certain number of hours, they just shut themselves off. So beware. So you can't even compare an SSD of a certain size. As a regular consumer, you have to look at what's the technology inside behind it. How long is it going to last? How many right cycles Is it good to be able to handle How about the GPU? If you're doing engineering work, you need a much better GPU that Yeah, okay, there's a GPU built into that Intel CPU, but it's nowhere near as good as having the next-gen CPU or GPU made by company x company y company z. Craig Peterson 6:16 So, even though I'm tempted to cheap out, I don't and I am much happier because it lasts longer and it performs better the whole time. So I'm not sitting there waiting constantly for something to happen because it's so slow. And that's why I moved to Apple, frankly. Now back to the phones. Why I said I don't understand why people buy Samsung's Yeah, you know, in reality, I do understand. And it's, it's primarily because you have been fooled. Right? They the guys out there that are selling you that Samsung phone is pretending Well, maybe they just don't know better, but frankly, there are people in the organization that knew but do know better. pretending that this Galaxy phone is just as every bit as good as an iPhone 11 or an iPhone 10 and they are lying to you. And then when your phone fails and I was on that Android bandwagon for a while myself and my Android phones would fail, and they would not get updates at all for even for security patches. I realized that my suspicions were right, that these manufacturers are just trying to crank out the phones as cheaply as they can, as many as they can, and then move on to the next model to get us to buy the next model. Because the whole smartphone industry right now is suffering because of this whole big problem of people are just happy enough with the phones they have. So there's something called planned obsolescence as a part of this as well. Now I'm not saying that Samsung isn't giving you security patches because of Planned obsolescence. Although they might be I'm saying that Our friends at Samsung are really playing some games with you. And they are deceiving you. And they are really causing nothing but headaches. But there are ways around it. If you are buying an Android phone because you can't afford an iPhone, again, you've been fooled. Because buying an older model, the iPhone is always a better investment. And it's a better investment because it will still have some resale value in a few years, unlike that Android phone and it will be supported by Apple. Think about what's on your smartphone. Do you do have your contacts there? That might be a problem. Do you have any documents from your business, any text, any emails? That might be a problem because if your phone is hacked, which Android phones are, I just told you there's over there right now they're shipping with over 100 vulnerabilities pre-installed okay. Think about what else might be either to use your phone to check your bank balances. Does your phone have an app from your bank from your credit card company? Think about that for a minute. Apple gets their fixes out within a day. Samsung as we just found out can take up to even almost a year to get them out if they even provide them for your phone. Because they're only providing them for the Samsung the 10 and the S 10. And the S nine right now and that that will change so five years versus a couple of years okay. Plus the fixes they just come out from Apple. So do everybody a favor. Buy some of these iPhones by right now I would say go out and buy an iPhone 10 Xr good value. Easy to get and it's going to last a while stick around. We'll be right back with more you listening to Tech Talk with Craig Peterson right here on WGAN Craig Peterson 0:03 Hello everybody. Welcome back, Craig Peterson here on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. You can get all of this week's articles right there from me on my website and also the newsletter I try and keep you up to date on all the latest tech news you need to have. What are the important things and how should you be handling them so all of that up and Craig Peterson dot com and you can get my podcasts all over the place just in your favorite podcast app I'm really am almost everywhere now. You will find me please subscribe, and that helps our numbers and it helps get the message out and I really appreciate it if you do this isn't a labor of love. And I hope you can share this love with other people as well as we try and help them out. We are seeing right now. A major revolution in the world. And part of that has to do with our facial recognition. So I want to talk about facial recognition what department Homeland Security is doing right now, what China's doing this whole thing with some of the Arab countries and, and really why you should opt-out facial recognition. Department of Homeland Security has been using facial recognition now at the gates of some airports at some gates. And they've been trying to match your national ID photo with the picture that's taken at the gate. And they have arrested. I think it's almost 10,000 people who were here illegally, who overstayed visas, etc. I went to the airport to hop on a plane just have a domestic flight, not even International. And as they hopped on that plane, We're about to they were arrested. I mentioned illegal immigrants, which is certainly one qualification of people. But it also arrested criminals that were wanted for various crimes were, you know, independent of their legal status in the United States? Well, we have seen now over in China, some very, very scary uses of some of this facial recognition technology. And I being basically here, mostly libertarian, certainly on when it comes to our own privacy and security very libertarian. We've seen in China, some serious problems and right now, like this week in Iran, and I want to talk about what's coming here in the US within the next six months in China. They have been using facial recognition as part of their social credit system. So now in China, if you buy a phone, smartphone or otherwise, the carrier is required to take a picture of you Craig Peterson 3:09 and send that photo on off to the central government. So now the central government in Beijing has photos of everyone who's in the country legally. And I guess the illegally as well. And then they're using that to track you if you jaywalk, for instance, you lose social credit. There's a great dark, I think it's dark mirror right episode about this sort of thing. But if you jaywalk, you lose social credit. If you lose enough social credit, you can't vote. You can't even get on a train to go to work anymore. So they're using that in those ways. They're also using it to suppress religious minorities. Just this week on I think it was Wednesday. De An article came out showing a secret document that was in China that was part of their, you know, the Socialist Party over there. And the socialists had decided that they wanted to be able to have more reeducation camps. And the people that have gotten out of these camps say these are internment camps. They are torturing people. It's just insane what they're doing. And they're doing this to ethnic minorities there in China. A lot of them are part of a Muslim minority as well. So China has this facial recognition technology that they are starting to export. And China is a major driver in the United Nations now to have a facial recognition standard that they can use, okay, and that they want to be spread around the world and it's just absolutely amazing when you get right down to it. So we have also heard just this week about what's happening in Iran? Well, a couple of weeks, I guess. But there have been protests in Iran, you know, our sanctions against Iran have really been hurting them. They have a very hardline socialist government over there. But again, it decides what rights people should have and what they shouldn't have. They're not obeying any sort of constitutional protections as we have in the United States because they just don't exist, right. When it comes to a socialist country doesn't matter. It's whatever the head of the Socialist Party says whether it's a fascist government or communist government, it just doesn't matter because everyone's equals under their feet is kind of the bottom line. Right. Can you tell my political leaning on this one? Yeah, it's I think it's a bad thing. So in Iran, what they've started to do is they have been positioning snipers on top of buildings and shooting and killing at least hundreds. We don't get good reports on Iran, obviously. And they pretty much shut down the internet over there of people who have been protesting the government. Now it doesn't look like it's gotten to that level yet in Hong Kong, where they're also protest protesting the socialist government. But what China has started to do now is they are selling fully autonomous killer drones in the Middle East. And these drones are, are designed to decide by themselves, who they should kill. So you could literally if you're wrong, you could literally let these things loose in the streets. And let's say the curfew is 6 pm just as an example from 6 pm to 6 am. And anyone that the drone sees in the streets that it does not recognize either through the facial recognition or perhaps a uniform or some other method. ology, if it doesn't recognize you just shoots and kills you. Craig Peterson 7:05 extensively, these are going to be used in warfare, which means if we are battling over there in the Middle East, our troops could be up against these drones. And it could be very, very bad for us and for everybody else. Now let's talk about what's happening here in the US. I was shocked when I went down to New York City. It's been at least a decade, maybe 15 years ago. And I entered a building because I wanted to visit someone who had invited me to their business down there. So in I go, and I could not go into the building without presenting some form of ID, which they scanned and kept, and that really upset me, really upset me because it wasn't what businesses of theirs and they said, Well, you know, no, no. We need to be able to count the bodies that might be in here in case there's, you know, another bombing and we want to keep track of terrorists and every Now it's okay, well, wonderful. So there's a great article that I have up on Craig peterson.far.com, Karen peterson.com that came from Fortune magazine. And this is for actually from their newsletter. And fortune moved into a new office building in Manhattan a few months ago. And they had a new entry system. So a lot of these buildings, you have to have a card, you put the card up to the reader, and it might be something that you just touch it and it reads it with RFID might have to slide it in. But they put in a system that allows you just walk through because they've scanned your face. Just smile at the camera and in you go No more waiting, no more forgotten card keys or anything else. This I think is a very big problem. And the problem that I see and there are many of these, frankly surrounding this, but the biggest problem is If you lose your badge, you can get a new one. What happens if they lose the information about your face? What happens if that stolen?  You only have one face. And how can you be sure whether it's this building in Manhattan or the Department of Homeland Security that wants to scan your face at the airport? How can you be sure that it's going to be kept safe? Because unlike a John Travolta in the movie face-off, you just don't get to change your face over time. Big, big problem. So don't let them scan your face. And there are programs underway at the airports to try and get you to do that. Because you can just walk through everything's wonderful. All right, I disagree. So your next steps. Don't let your face get scanned. iPhones a little bit of a different deal when we talk about that when we get back. You're listening to Craig Peterson WGAN. Craig Peterson 0:04 Hi, everybody. Welcome back, Craig Peterson here on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Hey, let's finish up that last little discussion here. I just told you to opt-out of facial recognition systems whenever you can, you know, in some cases like what the Homeland Security Department is doing right now at airports, you can't really opt out of that. It's kind of like this. What do they call this ID program that they have, where your ID is something that the federal government recognizes and needed to fly. And the states are sending all of this stuff off to the federal government, which I think is a major violation of privacy, something that we've got to protect against but you know, again, you can't really opt out of that depends on the state. But I think as of next year, every state all 50 of them are going to have this new secure ID is part of your driver's license stuff I, I am really, really not happy with that. But maybe, maybe that's just me. I don't know, maybe it's just me I'm kind of paranoid in that regard. But let's talk about your iPhone or heaven forbid your Samsung Galaxy phone. here's, here's what's going on in the iPhone. The iPhone has had for quite a while now ever since it started having the thumbprint reader or the fingerprint reader. The iPhone has something called a secure enclave. Now, this has caused some people some problems over the years because if you replace the broken screen on your iPhone, and you didn't do it correctly, that broken screen at the bottom had that little fingerprint reader and if it's disturbed at all, you you now lost access to the phone period because that secure enclave was destroyed which is why so many people ended up going to Apple to have their screens fixed and moaned and groaned about it for very good reason If you ask me, so yeah, problems on that front. Craig Peterson 2:12 However now moving on to the next step, Craig Peterson 2:15 What is the 10, I guess the iPhone 10 came out and it had facial recognition built into it. And now the facial recognition not perfect. And it's interesting with my I have identical twin daughters. So my two daughters identical. One of them weighs a little more than the other one does. And they both have iPhone tabs with facial recognition turned on. And they can one of them can always unlock the other one's phone and the other one can sometimes unlock the other one's phone. But the facial recognition in the iPhone was having problems with identifying Eastern faces like you know oriental or whatever the culture holidays. But you know, Chinese and even Indonesians and Pacific Islanders and all of those people had some problems with. And China now with their facial recognition is trying to get African faces because it's having problems with African faces. So there are some problems with it. But one problem that does not exist with the facial recognition on the iPhone only is how is that data stored? Where's that data stored? Is it going to be stolen? Could it be stolen, etc, etc? The way Apple did it is the right way. And it stores your fingerprint information locally in the phone in the secure enclave, which is virtually 100%. No one has ever shown it to be anything less than a hundred percent hack-proof. It's amazing what a job they've done. So it stores the information about your face in this secure enclave. So if the phone wants to know is this really you? It asks a secure enclave. Hey, is this really him? This girl enclave says yes. And that's it Apple never get your face and never get your fingerprints. It's never sent up to the cloud. All of that is handled in the phone in a special chip that has a special sealant around it so it can even be physically broken into without destroying it, called the secure enclave. Very, very, very big deal. So when we're talking about facial recognition, and Apple I do trust it. I do not, however, trust the way Samsung's doing it or any of the other Android devices that I'm aware of right now. Now they're getting better but still don't trust them. Definitely do not use Samsung's fingerprint recognized recognition system. It is very, very, very hackable. They may fix that in the future. I'm not sure their facial recognition is actually better than the fingerprint system, but I wouldn't use either. But then again, you already know I wouldn't use an Android device, including any of the Samsung's that are out there. So, there you go, opt-out when you can have facial recognition. For the most part, it's a very bad idea. And if you're using an Apple device, facial recognition is okay. I still personally prefer the fingerprint as opposed to facial recognition but maybe that's just me, but I have an iPhone eight as well. And that's all it has on it on maybe I'd like facial a little better if I had it on my phone. But I'm not planning on changing from an iPhone eight, probably until next year, next September when the iPhone 12 comes out. Although my age can be supported for a while Apple just stopped supporting the iPhone six. So after the iPhone six, there's the six s there's the seven I think there was a seven as There's an eight, I don't think there was an eight as there was some 10. Craig Peterson 6:06 And now 11. So there you go, that six models that they're still supporting iPhones vs. Samsung, which support which is probably the best out there for support only supports two models versus six models. And it takes some half a year to get security patches out versus one day for Apple. Okay. All right. So let's talk about security. You might know that I've used Verizon for a long time for my cell phone plan. And then I switched over to T-Mobile because they had a much better deal. And most of the time where I'm trying to use the phone, I have coverage. It's rare that I don't Verizon definitely had better coverage than T Mobile does. But I'm saving a lot of money over on T Mobile. Well, T Mobile had a data breach, they confirmed so I want to tell you what Do how to protect yourself after this data breach. This isn't just for people who might be T Mobile customers. This is true for almost anybody out there. Okay, that just in general, when you have a cell phone, it's estimated that there were more than a million accounts that were breached according to Tech Crunch. So it is a big breach, but you need don't freak out now. Okay, don't ignore but don't get too nervous at the same time. Now, t-mobile has said that it has notified people who had been hacked, basically who's dated been hacked. And here's what they wrote. Our cybersecurity team discovered in shut down malicious unauthorized access to some information related to your team mobile prepaid wireless account. We promptly reported this to the authorities. None of your financial data including credit card information or social security numbers was involved, and no passwords were compromised. The data accessed was information associated with your prepaid service account, including name and billing address if you provided one when you establish your account, phone number, account number rate plan and features such as whether you added an international calling feature. Okay? So since the right planet features bit requires T Mobile to notify anyone who's affected. If you haven't heard anything yet, the odds are good that you're not in trouble here. But let's be a little paranoid. Let's tell you what to do right now. Okay. You're going to want to double-check your account settings. You can call t mobile's customer service number if you have at mobile phone, you can just tell 611 to confirm whether or not your account is affected now 611 does not just work for T Mobile. If your T Mobile customer that's what you dial in catch a T Mobile if you're a Verizon customer new dial 611 it'll get you to Verizon, etc, etc. Most of the carriers use six-one-one to get customer service. So if you are worried that your data was stolen here, you're lucky because really real critical information like your payment details, passwords, so security number was not stolen years, anyone can tell. So at best, they might be able to impersonate to either at t mobile or in another service. But here's what you should do. Set up a password or a pin with T Mobile. So when you call them at 611, make sure you have your latest build with you so that you have all of your account numbers all the information that they will ask you for. And then you can set up this password or a personal-identifiable number with TMobile. That way whenever you contact customer support, they're gonna ask for that specific information in order to proceed. Now don't forget the pinner pass. Word Are you going to have to go to T Mobile store in person and you have to verify you are, who you say you are, etc, etc. But that's the bottom line here, just quickly set up a pin. If you haven't done this with your carrier already a highly recommend you do that. And we've done it with all of our accounts for a lot of years. In some cases, there are also multi-factor authentication or two-factor authentication that's available. So they'll send you a message in their app that is much safer than sending an SMS message. Craig Peterson 10:37 So I want to talk to those of you. And I know many of you have done this, but those of you who specifically have accounts that hold Bitcoin, or any of these other cryptocurrencies, one of the ways that 10s of millions of dollars have been stolen from you guys. Is that your SMS has been hacked. So what the guys and gals are doing they're trying to hack you is they use SMS portability. And they pretend that they are you. They call up your carrier, they say hey, I've got a new phone, they give them the numbers for the phone, just an unlocked phone. And now all of your text messages and your phone calls are going to be transferred to them instead of you. So when you are trying to verify now, your payment, whether it's a bank account, or more particularly right now we're talking about a cryptocurrency account. When they try and confirm they're gits you going to send a pin via text message via SMS to your phone but it's not really going to go to your phone is going to go to the bad guy's phone. So this is why you really want to have a pin or a password so that when the bad guy calls up tries to steal your phone calls and your pin. They can't. Because they don't have that important information, the stuff they really need. So what I want you to do right now is go ahead and call your carrier, set up a pin, set up a password, so that you are safe here in the future. So we've talked this hour about facial recognition about why you should never ever buy an Android and some of the deals that are going on for iPhones, even older ones, and how to protect yourself with T. T mobile's big data breach. So coming up, we're going to talk about the five things you need to know about cyber insurance. The robot This is cute here for surveilling and playing with your cat Congress what they're doing this week on privacy, and a whole lot more you listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN online at Craig Peterson dot com Craig Peterson 0:04 Hey, everybody, Welcome back Craig Peterson here on WGAN of course online at Craig peterson.com. Hey, if you are new to the show a real quick introduction, I've been in the technology field for many decades. I have been doing internetwork, in fact, since the early 80s helped to develop a lot of the systems, some of which are still in use today. And I have been a victim of security problems with my business. I built a big business it was doing pretty well Well, technically a small business, but it was doing pretty well had 50 employees and then we got nailed now this was way back in the 90s. But when we got nailed, I had quite the wake-up call about what I really should be doing and, and, man, it was scary. It was really Really, really scary at the time I owned our own building, we had our own data center. It, we were building some of the biggest commercial properties online on the Internet at the time. And it was a really scary thing. It was like, you know, the bully in the yard right at school, and they would suck you right in the solar plexus right in the gut, right? And that feeling that you had you just you couldn't breathe, the not really pain, but it's just shocking. And that's how I felt. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to do it. We had anti-virus software. Why didn't it protect us? And it really bothered me and took a couple of days now. I was very, very technical. Of course, I still tend to me. If I have a real failure it is that it's kind of hard to remember what it was like not to know when any of this stuff. So you know, bear with me asking me questions. Okay, I get it right. I can be very confusing sometimes. Craig Peterson 2:09 But I was very technical. And it took about two days for me now this is back of course before Google or AltaVista, or any of these really great search engines. So I was using the stuff at the time, like our chain Veronica gopher stuff, and trying to find out what was going on. And it was actually digging into the machine itself, that revealed what the problem was. And I'd become a victim of what's known as the Morris worm. crawling through my machines and some other machines on the internet. It was, it was a really scary time. And I decided right then and there that I had to make cybersecurity priority. And I had to be able to help people with their cybersecurity and businesses as well. Now businesses you hope can afford to pay and keep my life On the right. And they've been very good to me my clients over the years, you know, I've had some great clients. And I've decided at this point in my life that I only want to work with great clients only clients that really, really want to work with me. But the same can't be said for consumers because you retirees and other people just don't have the money to pay what it costs to secure a business. You know, it kind of at a minimum, you're talking about $50,000 investment, plus monthly and 2500 bucks a month is pretty standard. And you could certainly go out and hire somebody to have somebody who's a quote it person unquote, but they are not really going to be able to help you out very much and they not going to keep up with it. And that's the biggest problem we have right now. My people who are involved in this every day spend about a third of their time in classes. And in coaching and conferences trying to keep up with what are the attacks? What is the best software out there? What should we be using? What are the techniques that we need to use nowadays? And so you as a home user, there's no way you can afford it. And as a business user, if you're running a Soho like a small office, Home Office, you cannot afford to do all of the right things. And that's what I'm trying to help out with. And that's why we talk a lot about security here on the show, and that's why I do pop up training and Facebook Lives, where we kind of delve into one aspect or more, and then I have paid courses as well, that tells you what the tools are, how to use the tools where you can get the Tools What, what are the best ones. And my newsletter, we talked about that a bit. In fact, if you got this morning's newsletter, we add a new section and actually, we have a new section that we're probably going to do this monthly, but it is the number one through five things patches you need to apply. Here are the five things you absolutely have to take care of when it comes to patching this month because there are extreme vulnerabilities and they are being used by the bad guys right now. I can't think of anything more valuable if you guys can let me know. For everybody, whether you are big business, a small business, a home user, right, it's making sure these have been applied or you could be in a whole lot of trouble. And now we're looking at the costs of recovering from one of these breaches and a very large percentage of businesses today. If they're breached, they file bankruptcy The next day, because that's how bad it's gotten and ransomware attacks are up and They're up across the board no longer they necessarily aiming primarily at these real big companies because they realize the smaller guys are the ones that are going to be easier to compromise. And then when you add into that equation, the fact that it takes about eight months for a company to notice that it has been hacked. Wow, think of the damage one of these guys could do. And it's everything from stealing the intellectual property that you've developed, whether it's designed, it can be a man, we have another client that we picked up, and she has a business that was a cutthroat, I had no idea how crazy cutthroat Craig Peterson 6:47 it is. She's in the design business for clothing, and purses, women's wear shoes, various other things. And in this whole design thing that she's doing the is quite a bit of money, and she had been selling into these huge retailers and things are going really well. And, you know, maybe one of these days we'll get deeper into that story. But this is just a couple of weeks ago, I met with her, and she lost everything. And now at what, how old is she now? 55, I think, or 50. She's starting over again, from scratch and I don't want that to happen. So the easiest, simplest, most straightforward and free thing you can do, frankly, is to subscribe to my newsletter. Now you're going to go to Craig Peterson comm slash subscribe, and I'm asking for your name and your email. That's all I'm asking for. Now, I don't hound you. I'm not like one of these internet marketers that sending you emails every day multiple sometimes unless I've got something that's big going on. There's training or something, I might send you emails during the week. reminders, hey, I'm starting this afternoon or whatever, right? That's the only time you're going to get a bunch of emails from me. And that's for the free training as well as some of the paid ones. But I am I don't sell your name, I am not trying to target you or anything else, right? So, if you subscribe, you will get my weekly newsletter. And in that newsletter, I have usually between eight and 10 articles, we tend to write a short article that few paragraphs long kind of describing what the problem is what you need to do give you some tips of what to do about it. And then we will link also to a third-party article, you know, unlike Forbes magazine, or some newspaper out there, etc. Dark reading there's another one that we get, we linked to quite a bit but you get all of that there. is no charge for any of this, I don't want you to feel like I did. And I got hit once that first time and I got hit once again a few years later completely different way. And that's when I decided, hey, listen to this, this low-end antivirus firewall thing that you buy at Staples or from one of these brake fixed shops, it doesn't really know much about it, it just isn't going to cut it. So I upped my game after that. But you are going to understand what you should do how you should do it. My recommendations, I throw those in there once in a while if somebody comes out with a new product, as we did with Wi-Fi here recently, and with some of the new Wi-Fi technology, what you should be looking for there and segmenting your network at your home or your small business so that your kids playing games who might be hacked are not going to affect your main network there, I can be able to get onto your computer, they're not gonna be able to get on your business computer, none of that stuff. But the only way you're going to find out about this is if you subscribe. Now I have hundreds and hundreds, probably 1000 recommendations from people who just really appreciate all of the stuff that I'm doing. And, you know, there's free stuff, hey, if you can afford it, I'd appreciate it if you get the paid stuff because, you know, there's more, it's better because you can afford to pay for it right? But I really don't hold anything back. Right? I'm not trying to play secrets. It's the type of software you use as a business. That for instance has some sort of a military subcontract, you have defiers it or regulations or a doctor's office where you got HIPAA regulations, or a business that has to deal with FINRA or PCI regulations, financial transactions and Companies, those guys hopefully have enough money to do it mostly right. And as I said, it gets expensive. We were just in a company, we did a proposal just I want about a month ago, I guess now, and to secure her stuff properly, it would cost her about 80,000 a year. Now she had a number of employees, but she decided she wouldn't, didn't want to pay it wouldn't couldn't, whatever. And you know, I understand that too. But your best free advice you're going to get by going to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, Craig Peterson 11:38 and I will be sending you my newsletter and I have three special things that you're going to get as well. That will come in the email after you confirm your subscription. So you subscribe, look for my email, click the link and you're all set. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and I'll be right back. Stick around Craig Peterson 0:06 Hey, Craig Peterson here on WGAN. Thanks for spending part of your day with me here. We're covering some of the topics that are really of interest, I think to everybody, and are certainly of importance to everybody. And that includes and I think in many ways is most particularly cybersecurity. So I want to talk right now about what to do after the fact. If you've been hacked, what are the right things to do? Well, there are some things that you can do right away. I remember back in the day if you noticed that your machine and this is true today. It has run somewhere and is doing something odd. The best thing to do is shut it off. And then have somebody take that disk and put it on another machine that can analyze it. Not just a regular machine, you don't want to spread that ransomware, but an analysis machine uses Knoppix or one of these other tools in order to have a look at it. But if you're a company, what do you do? If you're an individual, what do you do? A lot of people turn to insurance. In order to cover it, you may not be aware of it, but your homeowners' insurance may have a rider that covers cyber intrusions, on your computers. And if you're a business person, you probably have already purchased some sort of a cyber insurance policy. That makes a whole lot of sense, frankly, but it can be a requirement for your company as well to have cyber insurance. So I've got five things to know right now, about cyber insurance because the attacks are increasing. It's becoming more and more important for companies to protect themselves and Cyber insurance may not cover you. And I have seen quite a number of times where companies This is in the news, thank goodness, I don't have personal experience with this. But in the news, I've read articles where companies filed for their sideburn against their cyber insurance policy. And their policy didn't payout. Right now in the news, there's a big story about large companies that are suing their insurance company because they wouldn't pay out all of the money that the company thought should be paid out. Now, in this case, we're talking about cyber insurance. That said, Hey, you have to take reasonable steps. Now with the cyber insurance that we have. So for instance, depending on the level of service you have from us, we have a policy underwritten by Lloyds of London whereby if you are compromised? Well, we're taking care of your systems. There is I think it's a million dollars worth of insurance. So it'll cover the smaller businesses typically. And then hopefully you have your own cyber insurance, right? That's how this whole thing works. And then, of course, our company, we have our general insurances, our liability and all of the stuff you would expect to have the right key man type stuff, etc. But since the cyber attacks are now a top business concern, we're seeing numbers from Microsoft that found that cyber attacks beat out economic uncertainty, brand damage and government regulation as the top concerns for business owners and C level executives. So if you're sitting on the board of a company or you're sitting on the board of a nonprofit that you're trying to help out with This is something that should be big on your mind. I did a presentation for university, about insurance, cyber insurance, how it all works, what the problems

Well! Hi everyone, this is Dan Thompson wise money tools. Glad you could join me on this wise money tools video. So I got a quick question for you. Are you capable of picking your own mutual funds? Now that might sound kind of silly, but I started as a financial advisor back in 1986. Yep, old guy, little gray here. Now, if you work for a big firm, what happens on a fairly regular basis is you get these guys coming into the office. They're called wholesalers. And it happens a few times a month. A wholesaler is basically the sales force of a mutual fund company. And what they do is they come in and they tout their mutual funds tell you how wonderful they are. They take you to lunch, give you a pin, a cup, some sort of trinket and off they go. It's kind of taken for granted if a wholesaler shows up that management wants you to sell their stuff. Now this can be a conflict of interest is certain extent because oftentimes a mutual fund company will either pay a fee or give a kickback to the brokerage firm to push their funds. Now, they do this and it's all legal. But what they do is they call it a due diligence reimbursement. See, the brokerage firm has to pay an employee of sorts to analyze the fund group. And so the fund group will pay them for that due diligence. Well, there were a few wholesalers that came in while I was in my first year, and their stories were amazing. I felt like I couldn't go wrong selling their funds. I remember one wholesaler coming in. I guess this was about 3 or 4 years after I'd been in the business is around 1990. And he had this big pitch for their China fund. And that in China was going crazy at the time and their fund was up 45% for the year. And he said to all of us, he said, Now this is just the beginning. China's here to stay. This is where you want to put your money. I know about 3 months later, he showed up to the office. And he was touting their blue chip large-cap fund. And I remember asking him, I said, Well, last time you're here, you're talking about the China fund. How's it doing? Well, luckily, I had never sold any of it, because he was a bit uneasy. And he sheepishly admitted that it was down 90% and they closed it, closed it and I just felt like I dodged a bullet. Had I simply follow the wholesalers push, my clients would have been toast. Sadly, way too many brokers in my office had sold their clients to China fund. So that brings me to the point of this video. What happens to these funds when they close? Where does the money go? See a mutual fund company won't keep their dogs very long. Because they don't want them on their books. There's a stat that indicates that there are over 32,000 mutual funds that have closed, okay? Now they may have closed due to lack of interest, they may have close to bad management, they may have close to performance, or they just didn't have enough sizzle to keep them exciting. As with the China fund, there was a lot of sizzle for the sell. But as soon as the sizzle was drowned out, most of the assets were lost and the fun closed. Now they don't have to put it on the books, but there's still a little bit of money in there. So what happens to that money? Well, what they do is they typically roll what's left of your assets into another fund. Then they send you this letter that says now you're the proud owner of their new high flyer fund, right? Well, there are lots of reasons and excuses to make you feel all warm and fuzzy and that they did the right thing. But the reality is what they did is buried their dogs. So suppose there are two funds. One has a 10% return each year for the last three years. The other one has like a 2% return and then a negative 5% the last year. And you own the one that lost money over the last three years, what the mutual fund company can do is closed that dog. Keep saying dog, I love dogs by the way, and they roll those funds into the good one and hide the horrible returns of the other one. Now, here's where it gets a bit deceiving. So again, they give you a nice letter, explain the move, and now you're the proud owner of this new fund. But remember, you own that horrible fund for 3 years previously, right? However, now your money is rolled into the new fund. And at the end of the year, you get a statement that shows the last 3 years return as if you'd been in that fund. Well guess what? Somehow all the bad returns are wiped out gone. Your statement shows you've done 10% for the last 3 years, even though your actual account value shows dramatically otherwise. Now, this happened about 32,000 times in the last number of years, maybe not all of them for horrible returns. But still the history is wiped clean. And you're now part of the history of the new fund that you're that they rolled you into, even though you did not experience that history. I guess I point this out, because what did the broker that sold you the fund, know that You didn't know? Oftentimes, not much more than you could have read for yourself. In other words, brokers are subject to being sold a bill of goods by these wholesalers, just like they then turn around and sell you a bill of goods. With the research you can do on mutual funds these days in about five minutes. There really is no good reason to pay And to buy a mutual fund from a broker. Did you know that at the end of 2014, there were over 79,000 mutual funds worldwide 79,000 just in the United States over 9600. Korea alone has 11,000. And India is pushing to over 10,000. Now, here's what's really interesting though, do you know how many stocks there are in the United States? Well, in 1996, the US stock market peaked with issues at 7322. At the end of 2018, we had just over 3600. So those numbers have been cut almost in half. And now think about this. There are over twice as many mutual funds in the United States as there are stocks in the United States. And that's the only thing that mutual funds can buy. Okay, so back to my point of this video. Do you really think a broker can pick a mutual fund better than you see brokers and financial advisors pretty much hone into one or two mutual fund families. Maybe they like him because of the wholesaler. Maybe the returns for a particular fund has been good for the last few years. Or maybe it's the payback that if the firm gets I don't know, what am I mean by payback? Remember, I was telling you about the cost kickback for due diligence costs that many firms receive will brokers and advisors get a few perks as well. I remember in my second year of fund company invited me on a due diligence trip. They flew me to Chicago, picked me up in a limo took me to the Nippon hotel. I think it's called in downtown Chicago where I look right at this huge billboard of Michael Jordan from my room. Then they took me to the finest restaurants. It was just top notch accommodations. And then we had like a two hour meeting. Where they talked about their funds, their fund managers and how they analyze stuff and all that. By the time I left, I was so impressed with the company. They had this great story nice people. And of course, they treated me very well. Well, I got back to my office A few days later, and I did some research. I liked everything about them, except one thing. They had horrible results compared to other funds in their competitive group. So how can I justify selling them? The promise so many brokers justify selling them because of these due diligence trips. I talked with a few other guys in the office and they basically said. Hey, these guys are going to take care of you. And how do you know that they aren't gonna do better in the future, and you're gonna be fine, just sell them? Well, I couldn't do it. I just couldn't sell fund, because somebody took me on a nice trip. Now this happens several times each year. The courting that goes on behind the scenes is incredible. Now, I think that's curtailed over the years somewhat. It used to be much more you know, aggressive. I mean, some of the trips I've been on to sway me to sell their stuff have been incredible. The problem is you as a consumer, you have no idea if the broker you work with is unbiased. Did their research or if it's a good story, but they are simply paying back the wholesaler for their weekly visits, and for the little trinkets they get. And you're never gonna know that which again, takes me back to my point. There's no reason in this world that with a bit of research, you have just as good a chance of picking a mutual fund, as well as any financial advisor out there. Not only that, you'll save the fees as well a fee that is completely unnecessary in today's world. Fees can literally eat up 30% or more of your total return, even if it's only 1% a year. I hear that all the time. Well, it's only 1% a year. But if you look at some of the calculations of how that works out over time, it can eat up as much as 30% of your total return just for picking a fund. What I think is a better question is this. Our mutual funds all what they're cracked up to be. I mean, by the time you look at the actual return, the fees, the taxes, the manager of philosophy. You may be able to do much better on your own. Using what we like to do, and that's the Warren Buffett style of investing, you could potentially dwarf the returns on an actively managed fund. And it's not that hard. It's certainly worth exploring. That's the purpose of these videos to make you, your best financial advisor. The first thing you got to do is build up your capital so you have capital to access when it's a good time to be buying. Having cash or capital markets, correct or even crash is really the secret to Warren Buffett's success. He says, be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. There's a little fear out there right now. And maybe for good reason. We've got a great economy right now, a pro business, White House company profits are up wages are up employment, the lowest and 50 years. So there's good reason to be optimistic. I'd simply say if you aren't invested right now, and you have the ability to save. It may be the best time to build your capital base and keep cash. Buffett is sitting on billions and cash, like 122 billion at the end of last June. He's not investing much right now. Might be a good signal for us as well. One of the best places to save and build capital is through our banking system. It's safe, it's tax advantaged, it's accessible and ready to be put to work when those opportunities arise. And that's how you can create wealth with Without taking a lot of risk, and certainly without rolling the dice and picking the right mutual fund. Okay, so that's about it for this video. As always, if you have any questions, shoot me to questions at wise money tools.com. I'll answer as quick as I can. Don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to have a strategy session, make sure you click on the time trade link below. Always love to hear your comments as well. So feel free to comment below. Be Your best financial advisor, you're gonna feel more in control, do better with your money and eliminate ends of thousands of dollars in fees during your working life. All right, that's it till next week. Take care.

What's the most popular bird in the United States? Well if you guessed Bald Eagle - you'd be right. But what about the second most popular bird? Believe it or not it is the Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus). There's a reason that the Snowy Owl is so popular. Firstly, raptors in general and owls specifically are some of the most popular birds worldwide and have been the subject of attention by poets, authors and artists going back to the cave paintings in Europe. These owls are often used in movies and other popular culture to depict wisdom or strength. (Remember Hedwig in Harry Potter?) Those are admirable qualities that most people can identify with. And the snowy owl has other qualities that make it attractive. Their white color makes them striking and easy to identify. Another reason that people like snowy owls is that they are diurnal - you can see them at all hours of the day. The reclusive nature of most owls makes them hard to adore. Snowy's are considered more approachable. My favorite thing about snowy owls is that there are many stories, most of them true, about the feats of these magnificent birds. No less than John James Audubon said he once saw a snowy owl lying at the edge of an ice hole where it waited for fish and caught them with its feet. Another story about snowy owls tracks one young bird that flew from its nest in Victoria Island in the Canadian Arctic and flew all the way to Hudson Bay. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Avian Beauty. Thanks for listening. Be sure to visit avianbeauty.com for more bird inspiration and information and please consider subscribing (for free) to our blog and podcast. I’m Scott Bourne. Happy birding. If you'd like to show your appreciation for this site, please consider the purchase of prints or gifts featuring Scott's bird art, visit scottbourne.photos for more information.

How was it that a Protestant American president and the Roman Catholic pope came together in order to defeat communism during the Cold War? President Reagan and Pope John Paul II called their alliance "The Divine Plan," and we'll talk about the book by that name with author Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College. Plus: How much of a threat do modern socialists really pose to the United States? We'll discuss that and more on Wednesday's JANET MEFFERD TODAY.

Today, I am talking to Gwenn Aspen of Anequim, which offers remote assistant, Rent Manager call center, and Rent Manager software consulting services. Also, Gwenn and her husband, Jeremy, own the Wistar Group, a property management company. You’ll Learn... [04:40] How helping a friend, helped property management companies hire employees. [05:20] Currently, 150 employees in Mexico work remotely for property management companies in the United States and Canada. [06:25] Connections and Relationships: Life is all about taking care of and looking out for those you know and love. [06:50] Internal References and Cultural Differences: Holding each other accountable results in low turnover/high retention. [08:20] Managers Managing Remotely: If you manage someone who works remotely, get to know them as a human being. [10:51] Webcam: Teams founded on trust and transparency should be seen and heard. [14:50] For better or worse, Anequim and Wistar Group are unique and original company names that could be patented to prevent being sued. [16:45] Finding a Good Fit: Anequim helps potential clients identify things that they don’t like to do and give them to someone who does. [20:51] Time vs. Energy: Avoid burnout by identifying what fills or drains your energy. [22:20] Onboarding Training: Includes four ways to not die in property management. [26:12] Vetting Team Members: Extensive process of selecting candidates for clients. [29:47] Working in Mexico: No background checks possible or databases available. [34:09] Progress, not Perfection: Help property managers move forward and feel confident in making a commitment. [38:21] Anequim Structure: Assistants, solution agents, and others handle 1,200 units. [42:36] Every business needs systems: Planning, process, documentation, and communication. Tweetables Power of the Webcam with Virtual Teams: Just be there, and be seen. Time and Attention: A manager’s most important resources; use them wisely. Word to the Wise: Keep your clothes on when training employees. Our job is to make sure people are happy with their candidates. Resources Anequim Gwenn Aspen on Facebook Gwenn Aspen’s Email Wistar Group DGS 76: Outsourcing Rules for Small, Medium and Large Companies with Todd Breen of VirtuallyinCredible First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently Zoom Myers–Briggs Type Indicator Fair Housing Act Americans with Disabilities Act Culture Index Traction by Gino Wickman SweetProcess Process Street Basecamp Help Scout Intercom Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey? DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. 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 your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. 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 businesses and their owners. 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. Today's guest, I'm hanging out with the fabulous Gwenn Aspen of Anequim. Gwenn, welcome to the show. Gwenn: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Jason: I'm excited to have you. It's really fun hanging out with you in the green room and you were showing me your nerd glasses. Gwenn: That I carry around with me everywhere I go because there's always a need. They’re literally nerd glasses, you guys. They're from Hobby Lobby, I got them for an event I had to go to because we were revenge of the nerds and I bring them everywhere because that's how nerdy I really am. But we can have fun too, we can be fun nerds. Right, Jason? Jason: Yes. Maybe. It's probably possible. A lot of people think I wear all these weird, different glasses especially the orange ones. People notice I wear this orange glasses and they always come up to me and they think I'm trying to be so cool. Their like, "Why are you wearing this glasses? Are you trying to be Bono?" Which is funny because Bono wears them to block blue light, right? He's not wearing them just to be cool but he is cool. Way cooler than me. Then I go into this diatribe of why I wear them and how they block blue light and how it helps set my biorhythm patterns, helps me get good sleep, and then they’re just sorry they asked. Gwenn: Well, that's what’s in your nerd shows Jason. Jason: And then they realized they are nerd glasses, so they realize I'm a nerd. Gwenn: Yes, because they bring out your inner nerd when you wear them and people ask about them. Jason: Yeah. So, I got some less orange ones. This are my nerd glasses. This make me look a little bit smarter. Gwenn: I think they look good. I like them a lot. Jason: They're a little yellow to them but I don't have the tape. I have to get the tape and maybe add the tape at some point just to look more nerdy. Alright Gwenn, let's get into this. Give us a little bit background, so you run this company doing remote assistance from Mexico and you said they're not virtual assistance because they're not robots, right? Gwenn: Right. No. They're not. Jason: You manage Rent Manager, the property management back office. You manage Rent Manager's call center, so you have a call center for Rent Manager people. Gwenn: We do. Jason: Then you also have Wistar Group which is a property management company in Omaha, Nebraska. Gwenn: Yes. That's all true. My husband and I started Wistar Group back in 2006 so we've been doing this for a long time. In 2008, a friend of his called him from Mexico because he lived in Mexico before I knew him for five years doing something totally different, transportation and logistics. The friend called and she said, "You think the economy is bad in the United States? Well, you should come down to Mexico. Things are really bad down here and I lost my job. Is there any way I could work for you in some capacity from home?" Because it wasn't only about the economy, but it was pretty dangerous at that time and my husband is the most loyal person you'll ever meet, for better or worse. That's right when VoIP phones came out so we sent one down to her, we figured how to make it work and she started answering the calls for Wistar Group—at that time, it was called Certified Property Management. She's taking the calls and it works awesome. We love it. She loves it. It's great. Then we just started, as we grew, hiring all her friends for all the other jobs that we had. We just operated like that because it works for us for many years and then in 2016, our friends from Boutique Property Management in Denver, we were hanging out with them and they're like, "Hey, this Mexico thing is working out great for you guys. Can you hook us up with people from Mexico?" I was like, "Sure." Then I got them some employees from Mexico and they loved it. My husband and I were like, "Maybe we can help more property managers with this," and so it grown like wildfire since then and now we have almost 150 employees in Mexico working for property management companies across the U.S. and Canada. It's just a win-win for everyone and it's just so exciting and I love my job so much. Jason: Okay, great. This sounds very similar to [inaudible 00:05: 37] who we had in the show except they do the thing in the Philippines. It sounds like a very similar sort of etymology or story behind how you got into this and it really was filling your own need and starting by helping a friend and it grew into helping all these different property managers. That's the interesting thing I've heard from those that have Mexican staff is that they hire one and all of a sudden, all their family and friends start becoming team members too. Gwenn: Yeah. Jason: That must be a culturally different thing, I think with Mexico versus the Philippines. I think they are both very family-oriented, but I think there's something about Mexico that they're like, "Hey, hire my brother." Or, "Hire this family member," and they're connecting people. Gwenn: Oh my gosh. Yeah, the connections that they have, don't we all love that? Isn't that what life is all about? Is connections and taking care of the people that you love, that you know. It's just yet another thing to love about all the people I know in Mexico, is just how much they care for one another and have each other's back and then also hold each other accountable. That's the other things are that we grow a lot through internal references from one employee to another. If someone has a problem and they were the one who referred them, man. They hear it from the other employee. I mean there are that many cultural differences, but that's been a fun one. It really ends up keeping the turnover really low because they are happy, our employees work from home, and they love it, that's a huge advantage. They have this great connection with each other and we have Christmas parties. We're going to have a summer picnic with everybody. It's added a lot of richness to my life, just getting to know the employees as well. Jason: I was going to bring that up. A while back, I read a book called First, Break All the Rules. I believed it's pulled up by the Gallup Organizations that does the pulling. They did a whole bunch of surveying companies trying to figure out what makes a really good team and what creates retention with the team. One of the number one indicators of retention whether somebody was going to stay in the company was whether they have a friend in the business or somebody they are connected to personally on the team. So, that makes a lot of sense. It increases retention, significantly. Gwenn: I would say that's our job. If we’re going to hire someone remotely, if we’re the managers of this person, it's imperative that you get to know them as a human being to get that retention and to get that buy-in and to get them on your same mission going in the same direction. I feel like I know you much better right now just because we are in a Zoom Conference and that doing what with cam... Jason: Now, we're totally homies because we are in Zoom. Gwenn: Yeah, now we’re homies and we have the nerd glasses together, I mean. Those little things add to the relationship so if you make a point, I only communicate with people from Mexico using webcam because we have this amazing connection then and we feel like we know each other better. If you use a webcam, I swear it makes all the difference and getting buy-in from a remote employee. Jason: I absolutely agree. I've done a lot of remote hiring in the past and there's a huge difference, but it got to a point where eventually, I have a policy in our company called the Webcam Policy and everyone is required to have a webcam to be on the team and to communicate and show up and turn on the camera when we do meetings because it ended up being, at one point I remember showing up having team meetings and there's 5-10 people without their webcams on and there's just me putting on the show. Gwenn: I love that. I don't have an official policy, but not that you said it, I'm adding it. But I also have another employee from a totally different industry, he did a lot in banking and he was told to never have his webcam on. It was such a cultural dissonance when he came on the team because we were like, "Put your camera on. I can't see you. I don't know what you're doing. I need to see you." It was hard for him. It's good if you're somebody who requires webcams and state it at the beginning because some people, it takes them a while to get used to it. Jason: Yeah. It is a part of my onboarding process that they have to review the webcam policy and read it. Do you want me to tell you some of it here? Gwenn: Yeah. I think it's so important because whether you do remote employees from Mexico, whether you have someone in the Midwest, you know a lot of people hire people from rural Nebraska to work for their company because it's a lot less expensive. Jason: Alright. I'm going to share an internal secret here. Gwenn: Understanding the power of a webcam is crucial for the relationship working in my opinion. Jason: Alright. Here's our webcam policy for those listening. We are a team founded on the values of trust and transparency. It is important in a virtual team to be able to see one another on our virtual meetings since we often can't meet directly in person. As a team, we don't care about your hair, makeup, clothes, etc.during internal meetings. Just be there. Not having a webcam during internal meetings can feel like talking with someone behind a reflective window. It causes humans to try to assume and guess too much because they lack nonverbal cues we have evolved to rely on. Why address this? And then in bullets: to promote an environment of trust and transparency, to improve the efficiency of company communications and shorten meetings by effectively communicating with the full spectrum of verbal facial expressions and nonverbal cues, to reduce multitasking, right? Because they [...], they're like, "Oh yeah. I'm listening." Gwenn: Right. Totally. Jason: To reduce the anxiety of those speaking on camera, and then having the expectation. It is expected that all team members will join OpenPotion, that's our corporation, virtual meetings on video in order to fully engage in team and one-on-one meetings, this promotes collaboration on multiple levels and it allows each individual to feel heard as they see and receive nonverbal cues from their peers. This also increases productivity and reduces anxiety as ideas are better understood when they're coupled with facial expressions, gestures, and other forms of nonverbal communication. When meeting with clients, we appreciate you doing your best to make yourself and your background presentable, but that is not required. We just want you fully present and visible. Then I have a quote and it says, "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said," Peter Drucker. Gwenn: Oh, I love it. I love it although I would push back on the not caring what you look like because I've had people show up, not very often, but I had a guy and he looked like he'd just been to the club, and just rolled out of bed, and I was like, "Man." Also, you have to know your audience. We have a screenshot and keystroke that we record of everyone that's working for us while they're working not when they're not. We had one guy who was at a webcam conference and he had his hat sideways and my assistant was like, "Is that okay?" If you live in California that might be okay, but if you're with an older team in Omaha and you have your cap on sideways, it just might not work. I was like, "No. They're in California. It's totally fine." She was like, "Oh, okay." You have got to know your audience, better know your audience. Jason: I think it all boils down to what the entrepreneur wants though too. Before the call, I'd ask you what your Myers-Briggs Type was and you're an ENTJ, so you've got that J in the end. Gwenn: So, I’m Judgy? That means I'm judgy, right? Jason: Yeah. You're judgy which means you're a planner. You want things done a certain way. This details matter to you. I'm a P so I'm all over the place. I'm a bit more open-minded and I love taking you Js and cracking you open a little bit to expose you to some things you weren't exposed to before. Gwenn: I need people like you in my life too because I can't be too in the box. It's so nice to have that fresh [...]. Jason: J from the box for sure. Ps have no box and Js look at us like we're crazy. Some of the Ps that are perceiving, that's what the P stands for, they will take in things from all different sources, all different ideas, and to most Js, that's being so open-minded, their brain is falling out. It's how Js kind of view us sometimes but we need each other. All these other different types. I definitely need Js on my team to run my email, handle my calendar, do all the planning stuff that is not fun for me. You do this virtual team thing, how does somebody start with you if they come to you and they're like, "Hey, Anequim." First, where did that name came from? What does this name mean? Gwenn: I'm going to give you the real answer. We used to be a certified property management and then [...] wanted to sue us because they were like, "We have a certified property manager distinction," or whatever. Jason: Designation. Gwenn: Designation. We were like, “Well, we wanted to rebrand anyway,” because we started from nothing and took any piece of garbage that had a roof on it and then as time went on we became more sophisticated, and wanted to take out nicer properties, but in the local market, we were the low end. We already were going to rebrand, but we didn't want to get sued or threatened of a lawsuit again, so we were like, "We have to have something that's totally unique." Well, it's very hard you guys. It's so hard to find something completely unique. My husband's a pilot for fun and so he loves this airplane called Anequim and it means mako shark in Portuguese, anyway that was like a word we could use that was unique. We got Anequim and then Wistar Group. Wistar is my middle name and they were unique enough that my best friend who is a patent attorney approved them. For better or worse we're Anequim and Wistar Group. Jason: There you go. Alright. Portuguese mako shark. Gwenn: It's also an airplane. Jason: Which has nothing to do with Mexico whatsoever. They don't even speak Spanish. Gwenn: But I'm not going to get sued for it, so you know. Jason: No, it's perfect. It's a unique and original name which is helpful in branding, right? Okay, cool. Now, how does somebody get started with you guys. Somebody comes to you and say, "Hey, I’ve got a problem." How do you know that you can help them? Because I'm sure there are clients that you don't take on and there are clients that aren’t a good fit. Gwenn: There are. In fact, there were two clients yesterday that called me and I was like, "You know what? I think you guys just need to wait for a minute." And that is my thing. We don't sell. We try to make a relationship because if I sell you and then it doesn't work for you, then it creates a lot of heartache and drama for me because I want the person in Mexico to be happy and I want the person in the United States to be happy. What happened yesterday was, this one guy was buying another company, and they already had two employees there, but he hadn't really worked with them yet. I was like, "Hmm." He was going to be managing 400 properties. I felt like his people count was good enough for 400 properties, so I said, "Just take on these two new people. Measure processes and procedures together, make sure it works, and then when you get a handle on them then call me." He was like, "Okay. That's a better idea. That's what I'm going to do." If you call me and it's not going to work for you, I might tell you to do a few things first. Then the other guy called me and I thought again that his head count was already too high. I thought you could make more efficiencies in his software because a lot of people only use 5% of the software that they have purchased. If you have five really expensive employees and 400 units, I kind of think you should work on being more efficient first with your software and then call me. Jason: Yeah, right. Gwenn: Unless, you’re going to transition things—but these were obviously, longer conversations, I'm giving you the shortened versions—so if someone calls me and they're like, "No. I need somebody. I'm working my butt off and I need some relief." Then we'll talk about a job description first because I need to find the right person for this role. I need to know what kind of tasks you want. For instance, if you want someone to be doing a lot of cold calling then that's going to be a different person than someone's who's going to be helping you associate the right invoices with the right property and the right owner, right? We have to make sure we have a good job description. Also, your training is going to be better, it’s going to be a smoother onboarding process if you are really clear about what your needs are. Now, a lot of people will call me and they are just overwhelmed and they'll just be like, "I need a personal assistant." A lot of the times I push back on the personal assistant and I say, "Why do you need a personal assistant?" And they'll be like, "I just hate taking the phone calls. " I say, "Okay. Well, let's find someone to take your phone calls." Really, if you want a personal assistant because you are overwhelmed, think about the things that you hate doing that don't bring you joy, that don't fill you up, and let's give those to someone who's a better fit for those roles, that loves doing those things. Usually, it starts with a conversation about what the pain point is and what people really need, who they already have in their team, and what software they are using. We come up with a plan that would actually help them get what they want. That's kind of my goal. It maybe me, it may not be me, but my goal because I come from the property management world is just to prevent burnout from whoever's calling me. Whatever that looks like. Jason: Yeah, so you're helping them a little bit “KonMari” their time, right? Gwenn: Yes. Jason: And you we're talking about that before. Gwenn: Oh my gosh. Well, I love that. Maybe I should use that, but you have so many things that you have to do. Some people are coaches and that's really important to them, their property managers, and their families. Your time and attention are two of your most important resources and everyone on your team needs you to be using those wisely if you’re the one steering the boat. Jason: Yeah. I'm a big fan or proponent of energy management over time management... Gwenn: Yes. Jason: ...and really identifying what energies you as an entrepreneur versus what drains you because we really afford doing the things that energizes us, we have an endless amount of energy. Like our life and our businesses fills us but if we are doing things that drain us, burnout sets in and it's inevitable, it becomes really difficult. I think it's really important for people to pay attention to their time and what really is giving them momentum. I tell property managers all the time, “Anything that's been sitting on your to-do list for more than a few weeks, you're probably not the person that should be doing it. Let's be honest.” Gwenn: Right. Absolutely. There are people like, you and I we are just talking about how our personalities are different. Find someone who you like working with. Who you enjoy spending time with because it isn't actually an employee essentially just living far away that compliments you and can do the things that you struggle doing. Our role is to help people do that and we also train them on the first day so I have very high anxiety. I take care of things that make me anxious. I always go over the four ways people can die in property management on the first day, carbon monoxide poisoning, natural gas explosion, fire, and a technician being mistaken as an intruder and getting shot, and the importance of asking permission to enter. Those are four things we go over, which is really funny because when we turn over the training to the client, my assistant will always be like, "So, what did you learn in training?" And they're like, "How not to die in property management." The clients are like, "What?" I mean, I told them that we were going to talk about that with the agents but people forget and they're caught off guard. Jason: Four ways to die. Gwenn: Four ways to die, but those are really, really important and it really does happen. And our industry, there's been a number of deaths that we're all aware of, and so it's really important whether you're going to hire someone remotely or not to really discuss what bad things can happen, and how to make sure they don't happen in on-boarding training. The other thing we cover is Fair Housing and American Disabilities Act. That really should be trained every year if that's not on people's schedules for training. Domestically, I don't do this with the remotes, but domestically at our property management company, the other one is sexual harassment prevention training. We have a 70-year-old sales guy and then we have a 21-year-old front office lady. When you have multi-generational employees especially what they think is appropriate is totally different. It's important to discuss that because people aren't trying to be jerks, and they're not trying to be bad people, and they're not trying to offend anyone, it's just that what was totally appropriate in 1950 to talk about in the workplace is different. Also, on the 21-year-old side. I mean, 21-year-old sometimes think everyone's their best friend and they’re hanging out at the bar and it's not true. Having that conversation at the beginning of a relationship with any employee is important. Jason: Okay. Fair Housing and Disabilities Act, sexual harassment training, and four ways to die in property management. Gwenn: Yeah. If you're going to be using webcam, here's another thing. I did have a client who thought that it's totally appropriate to train his new employee without any clothes on, so a word to the wise, keep your clothes on if you are going to be training somebody. People, sometimes just don't know, they just don't know. I'm sure it was hot, it was summer, maybe went out to the pool and came back. It was really not okay. It's another thing to keep in mind. Jason: Policies improve overtime. You know there's something interesting if my webcam policies say, "Don't be naked." It doesn't say that yet. We haven't had that come up yet, but if it does happen, we'll definitely have that in. Gwenn: Yeah. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: I mean, I had no idea that's going to be an issue but... Jason: Right. You never know until it happens. I think that's how all of the property management contracts evolved over time. Like, "Oh, this one's a weird new situation. Let's avoid that in the future and write that into our contract." Gwenn: Right. Jason: Okay. Somebody comes to you, you start them with some of these things, how are you vetting these Mexican employees, these team members? What are some of the things you go through to ensure that you're getting a good match, you're finding somebody who's really a good fit for a position? Help those that are listening feel safer using Anequim to find them a team member. Gwenn: Sure. The first thing is that they have to fill out an application and upload a video of themselves speaking in English about their hobbies. You find out a lot about people when they think it's appropriate in a video to say about their hobbies and how good their English level is. It also demonstrates that they have some technological ability because they have to upload a video. Jason: Right. Gwenn: We get rid of a lot of applicants right there. If they make it through those two steps, then we have them take a personality test. We use the Culture Index, and the Culture Index indicates whether people have detail orientation or not. Generally speaking, unless I'm hiring for marketing position or outside sales or something, we are going to need detail orientation. We look for that. There are few personality types that we just don't hire at all and we also have a logic-emotional continuum. Anyone who's really low on logic also not pass to the next level. After that if the make it there then they do an initial interview and it's a pretty tough interview. Ensures they have the qualifications and the seriousness that we are looking for. Generally, the pool of candidates that we are looking for have worked previously for a large corporation. So, in the towns where we primarily source our candidates, they work for Nissan or GE or Hewlett-Packard or TATA Consulting, and there's some really big names where they've already one through a lot of the training that you wouldn't need to train a brand new person on. But they've already been through it so they know how to talk on the phone, they know how to deal with conflict in a professional manner, and they know how to write an email. We do benefit from all that corporate training many of our folks have already been through. Jason: Okay. Gwenn: If they make it through the interview then we are going to start calling their references and just make sure those show up well. After that, our clients, if they've made it through all the interviews, we’ve decided this person is worth this amount of money. We have a paying scale based on education level, work experience and we know what kind of job they would fit into then we match them with our clients we have who are looking. The clients get to look at three different candidates, and see if this is a cultural fit for them and if this is someone that's going to work on their team, and that they're going to feel comfortable with on a day to day basis. We always do the interviews in threes. Hopefully, we do our job well enough on the first three know exactly who we want, but if you want to do another round, our job is to make sure people are happy with their candidates. The one negative about working in Mexico—and this is going to be with a lot of the country that you would source from—background checks, it's not the same, there's no government database and even if there was it probably won't be accurate in the way that you and I would expect, so there's no background check policy or way to even do that if you wanted to. We rely a lot on internal references and those networks or people want to give us their best friend and then they internally hold them accountable as well. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: We haven't had any issues with it, but I would suggest with anyone working remotely, you manage your privileges and your software. Rent Manager allows me to obscure social security numbers, credit card numbers, and we have a policy that nobody working from home has access to those, and you have to be in the office if you are going to be taking credit cards or looking at social security numbers. If you have good tight privileges, you don't really have much to worry about by hiring someone remote, and it's just a good policy anyway. Jason: Yeah. Alright. That is kind of the match making process. Gwen: Mmm-hmm. Jason: Then once they pick a candidate, what's the transition like this on the onboarding sort of process and how far does Anequim gets involved? Because I know some property managers are not probably used to having a virtual team member, they are probably going to make some mistakes, they might just say, "Hey, this virtual stuff doesn't work. I don't get it." How do you ensure that the transition is going to be healthy? Gwenn: First of all, we try to get a good plan on before we even get to that place. We have documents on ideal first two weeks of training and talk to them about what that process looks like, talk to them about technology, what kind of phones do you use. We recommend that you listen to calls if you're going to have someone who's the face of your company, and you're not going to be able to overhear them when you walk in the office. Here's a form on monitoring calls and here's the portal so you can see their screenshot and their keystrokes. We try to do all of that before the commitment takes place. Talk about what that looks like, so that when the commitment like, "Yes. I want to move forward," happens they've seen in their minds, "I kind of have an idea what this looks like." We don't want for either the client or the agent to get to a place where it's the first day and they just look at each other in webcam and go, "Okay, what do I do now?" We try to avoid that situation as much as possible, which is why we’re not trying to hard sell anyone. We want someone to be committed to the process and feel somewhat confident. Obviously, you're going to be a little bit nervous if you've never done this before, but that's why we are here to hold your hand, and give you that documentation and talk you through it so that you feel more confident before it actually happens. But then, on the handover meeting you're going to get all of them setup on their computers. You're going to get them to know everybody on your office, taking the laptop around and you're going to say, "Tell us something that people don't know about you." Or, "What are you grateful for today?" You know, a little icebreaker and then you'll get into the tasks. The great thing about working with Mexico is that they're on your time zone. Do you have to be perfect? Do you have to have the perfect documentation? No. Because like any other employee that you hire, you can just say, "Okay. I'm going to show you how to do this." They know it should be written down but it's not, "But you're going to help me write it down because I never had time to do this before. Here's the software where were writing it down. Here's how you're going to get a screenshot using Snagit. I'm going to video record myself going through this process and then make it a pretty process for me and then when it's done and it's all pretty, then you're going to do it." That's possible. Some people are further along in their processes and procedures than others, but by no means you have to have things perfect to move forward to the remote assistance. Jason: Yeah. The Myers-Briggs people with Js a lot of times get really caught up to being perfect before they move forward. They're like, " I have to have every process documented before I could grow my business." Gwenn: No, that's not the real world. I would say progress not perfection, right? I mean, you have to move forward. I'm reading this great book called the Billionaire Coach or the Trillionaire Coach, I think is what’s it called. It's really good. It's on my audible right now. But the guy is like, "Okay. Once you have things down, you have to go, and you have to go fast." I think that sometimes the people who are really into perfection lose sight of go, go fast, so it's always that balancing act. If you're not good at processes and procedures then hire someone to help you do that and just show them on in a video and say, " Okay, for the next three hours you're going to write this down. Okay? Then I'll check in on you in three hours and see how you're doing." Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: That's totally okay. Jason: I like that. Progress over perfection, so what I teach clients is, "Done is better than perfect." It's very similar. Gwenn: It is. Jason: Done is better than perfect. Get it done, you can always redo it later. You can make it better the second time around but having something is better than not having it. The other thing that I'll throw out there, sometimes is that perfect businesses are out of business. So, don't try to make everything so perfect before you move forward. It's the businesses that fail, that make mistakes, that rapidly prototype, that try stuff out and see what doesn't work, they're the ones that move forward faster. Gwenn: And when you have that hard day where things really did fall apart then just go back to the values. Like, "Okay, it fell apart, but I'm suring it up as a value, as a person with values. So, what does that look like?" If you have your values strong and you’re connected to them then when you mess up, if you just go back to that, you'll be fine. Jason: Right. Gwenn: That's how I look at it at least. Jason: That's the foundation. Gwenn: Yeah. Jason: A really strong why and set of values for the business. That's what creates culture in a company. Well, cool. What are some of the questions that property managers ask you that I haven't asked yet? Some of the frequently asked questions, concerns, considerations. Gwenn: The main thing is the role. People are just like, "Okay, everyone's doing VA and I know I should be doing it because I'm just supposed to be more profitable than I am right now, but where the heck do I get started?" Usually, when people ask that, I just tell them because we've been doing this since 2008, how our company is organized because I do feel like we do remote labor as high of a level as you could. You might structure it slightly differently but just to give people an idea because the thing is in people's minds and eyes, they remember virtual assistance. They think, "I need my processes to be perfect. This is someone who can only do route activities, can't think outside the box." All of that is not true. These people from Mexico, can be, if we hire for it, highly educated. We even have some professors on the team. We have some attorneys on the team. Highly-educated people who most certainly are capable of thinking outside the box. Guadalajara, where we source a lot of the people, it's the tech capital of Mexico. When I go to the Christmas Party in Guadalajara, people are speaking Spanish, English, French, Portuguese. It's like an international gathering, like any European city that you'll be at or anything like that. Here's how we're structured. We have 1200 units that we manage. We have three customer service people residing in Mexico who take all the front line calls. We actually call them Solutions Agent instead of Customer Service Agents because they're job is to provide solutions. They don't just read from a script, but they can also talk to tenants about their statement and what it means, what's this maintenance service issue, maintenance charge is for, and help people break a lease, give them information about breaking a lease, changing roommates, tell them if they could have a puppy or not. Actually solve problems that give solutions. They also take all the maintenances services issue and troubleshoot. The great thing is that you don't have a PhoneTree when you call into our office. You just get a person which is a really good customer service. Most property management that I call have a PhoneTree and then you still can't get a hold of everybody. Thinking about what the experiences of an owner calling your main line, and what that feels like, maybe important in many of the markets that people are in. Once someone takes their phone call, any elevated issues will go to the assistant property manager. Let's just take a simple thing, it's not even elevated but like a service issue. We’ll go from customer service agent, we'll take everything from the service issue then it goes to what we call the virgin list, the assistant property manager review that—and we have three of those, by the way, one for each property manager has an assistant who's a true assistant—and they look at all the service issues that come in and decide whether our internal maintenance team can handle it or if it needs to go into a vendor. If it needs to go to a vendor then they're in charge of putting a budget on it, and based on the contract, whatever the owner wants, and then signing it to a vendor and then following up on that. If it goes to our internal team, then another woman in Mexico who's the Maintenance Dispatcher decide whose list it goes on out of the 15 maintenance people that we have. Her job is to manage those guys' schedules and make sure they're busy. Make sure they have work and make sure that they're going to a place that makes sense. Then other people that we have is accounting. We have two people in accounting and collections. They don’t just do accounting but they're also are like, "Why is this maintenance guy going to store three times in a day?" He's like actually analyzing the invoices and saying, "This price doesn't make any sense." We have two people there. We have Applications Underwriter who does the applications in Mexico as well and a marketing person in Mexico. I feel like I'm forgetting somebody. I think that's it. Jason: Anything on the sales BDM side? Gwenn: No. My market, we get a lot of business just coming in the door so we don't have a BDM. We have some sales people that are on a commission basis but we don't have an official BDM role. We actually decided not to get one this year which is weird because sales always pay for itself, but when we look at the numbers in our market, it didn't make sense to get someone at that price point. Instead we’re buying a company in another market and growing that way, but that deal's not totally done yet. Jason: Right. Gwenn: Those are the people that we have in Mexico. Internally, we have a front office lady, a leasing agent, operations manager, a maintenance manager, and right now, we only have two property managers. And then my husband runs the company and puts his finger in everything. That's pretty lean for 1200 units, it's pretty a lean shop. Jason: Yeah, that's really lean. Then you have a pretty decent process documentation, I would imagine as well. Gwenn: We use SweetProcess, where we house our processes and procedures and we’re kind of obsessed with it. We use EOS so we’re using the traction book. We've been doing that for 2 ½ years now and love it. That's how we stay organized and set our goals and priorities and make sure that we don't get lost in the day to day task and know where we’re going on a daily basis. Jason: Yeah. I think every business, eventually, as they evolve, they need a planning system which you had mentioned EOS. Every business also needs a process system, some system for documenting process and leveraging these processes. We use Process Tree internally, which works out really well. Gwenn: And I like Process Tree, but it's more expensive than SweetProcess. It depends on what your needs are, but I would recommend looking at both and determining what's better for your organization. But yeah, I like both those systems a lot. Jason: Every business needs some sort of communication system in the business as well. As a team, we use Basecamp as our communication platform to communicate internally, and then you need a client supporting communication system. A lot of people are using Help Scout or Intercom, or one of these knowledge based support systems. There's probably other systems. I'm forgetting off the top of my head, but business really need all these different systems in place. Once you have these systems in place, it facilitates and enables your team to really do well and communicate and understand where the company is headed and get in alignment with your vision and your goals. It's a big deal. Gwenn: Yes. There's a lot to take on, but again, people don't have to be perfect. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: Because when you say that it's like, "Oh my god, that's so overwhelming." But it doesn't have to. Jason: One thing at a time. Yeah. Gwenn: One thing at a time, Yeah. Jason: Cool. Cool. Gwenn: That's why I like EOS though because it takes that overwhelming. The, "Oh my god we have 10 million things we have to do this year," and it forces you to say, "Okay. How much energy do we really have and what are the priorities out of my list of million things that I'm going to do in these three months?" It actually helps you get more of that done than you would if you just look at the long list. Jason: Yeah. It has an etymology that's very similar to a lot of business planning systems and most every business planning system has annual objectives, quarterly objectives, monthly, and these things break down and the idea is, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." Gwenn: Right. Jason: It’s like these elephants, you break them down in a 90 day, 30 days, and then even weekly commitments as a team. But a lot of business don't have any sort of planning system in place, so they're hitting zero objectives because they really don't really have any, and there's no clarity around it. They’re just winging it and the entrepreneur's, they're crazy. Entrepreneurs come into the room and says changes every week, "Hey, guys. I got this great idea." And they lob a grenade in the middle of the room, pull the pin and lob this grenade and walk out. They're excited and pumped out and the team are like, "What are we going to do with this thing?" Having those systems in place can be really helpful especially if you have virtual team members because then it makes a lot of difference for everybody to be on the same page. Gwenn: People, historically, have thought like, "Oh, were going to do all these planning and then we'll tell them later what we planned." But I recommend having the virtual team members in on all of those meetings. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: Here's one tip that has really helped us. We have the three customer service agents. Every morning at 10 o'clock they meet with the Operations Manager and just say, "Oh, this person is out of the office today. They have a dentist appointment at 2:00 PM and it's whoever's birthday. Our swing thought for the day is people can hear you smile. In the call monitoring, I've noticed that there's not been so much smiling on there, so let's keep that in mind for today. Today's contest for online reviews, we’re still giving $50 certificates to anyone who gets an online review." Whatever you have going on and just touching base for 10 minutes a day makes all the difference for someone whose remote. When you have your weekly EOS meeting, include them and what you're talking about. If they feel included in the process and in your mission, people don't leave. We've had the same employees at Wistar Group for six, eight, I think, is it nine years. I think we have two employees who've been with us for nine years. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: That's the key to getting the virtual or the remote members totally immersed in your culture. Jason: Yeah. They need to be a part of it, ironically, right? Gwenn: Absolutely. Jason: Yeah. I'm a big proponent of making sure that your team members are involved in outcomes instead of being micromanaged. Give them outcomes and let them innovate and you'll be surprised with what they can come up with. It might not be the way you would do it, it might be better. A lot of times, as entrepreneurs, we think we have it all figured out. We need to tell our team members, "Here are the steps. Do this exactly this way." When it comes to goal setting, goals are outcomes. Assign an outcome to somebody, let them own it, and I think you'll be surprised at the results they can create. Getting your team all involved in it, some of those meetings have been really eye opening for me because I had my set of ideas. I thought this is how the whole world looks and then I went around and asked my team members, "Here's this outcome. What ideas you guys have that can do it?" My graphic designer has a totally different idea than I would have. My head of fulfillment has totally different ideas than I would have. They bring this perspective and all these ideas were really good. I'm like, "Yes. We should do that, maybe not that, that one's great." I think you don't want to be the emperor with no clothes running a company. That's how you do that, is by allowing your team members to have a voice and be involved in the process. Gwenn: I love that. Actually, we teach a version of that on the first day of training. Its form this article that you can get on the internet called Who's Got the Monkey. Jason: Okay. Gwen: It's the number one reprinted article from the Harvard Business Review of all time. I only came across it out of massive failure years ago. Where I took my team members out to lunch and I thought they would tell me how much they love their job and they were like, "No! We don't love it. You guys never listen to us." I was like, "What?" They're like, "Yeah. We don't even bring up ideas to you anymore because you are never going to listen to them anyway." I was like, "Oh my god. This is terrible." I found the article on the internet and we came and have a change management process. We asked our team members to own their ideas. The first steps are people come to meeting and say, "Hey, not all ideas are good ideas, but here's my idea." That allows people to save face and be vulnerable and say what they're afraid to say in the meeting. Then they have to bring everything to the meeting—the subsequent meetings—to move the idea forward... Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: ...so that the decision maker can just say yay or nay. Sometimes, there's a little homework on the decision maker’s part, but we try to make it as minimal as possible. I take it from sale, in sales people are always eternally optimistic and they think everything's going to close. My way of determining if it's going to actually close or not is, "Is your name on the prospect’s calendar for another meeting? If it's not, then your deal is dead." Just black and white. Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: If it's not there, you can revive it, but you better get a meeting out there. Same thing with ideas, "If your name in this meeting is not on anyone else's calendar, your idea’s dead." Just know that because when people feel badly about their job, when they get vulnerable, they say it and their manager is like, "Oh, that's a great idea," and then they wait three months and nothing happens to it, that really hurts morale. Giving them the honest, "Hey, it’s not moving forward if there's not a meeting" Jason: Yeah. Gwenn: And having them own that helps give them agency over their idea. Jason: Yeah, I love it. Cool. Let's wrap this up, Gwenn. I think this has been really helpful. I think we talked about some really cool ideas. I think, hopefully, some listeners are a little bit more open to having some team members that are not sitting in their physical office. How can people get in touch with you if they are interested in learning more? Gwenn: Well, I'm on Facebook. If you want to send me a message at Gwenn W. Aspen, I'd love to meet you there. Additionally, we have a website anequim.net and you can fill out a form, we'll get right back to you there, or you can email me at gaspen@anequim.net. But we love to help people, and like I said, if you just want to bounce ideas off whether this is a good idea or not, we can talk about your specific situation. Jason: Awesome. Gwenn, thank you so much for coming into this show. Gwenn: Thank you, Jason. It's been so fun. I really appreciate you having me. Jason: Alright. We'll let you go now. Alright. Bye, Gwenn. Gwenn: Bye. Jason: So, there you have it. Check them out at anequim.net. For those that are listening for the first time or checking us out, we really appreciate you subscribing. If you’re listening on YouTube or watching on YouTube or listening on iTunes, we would appreciate—if you are on iTunes—you give us your feedback. We would love to hear your real and raw feedback. Again, give us a review on there. It will be really helpful especially if you liked the show. We would love that, that gets us excited. Then make sure you get inside our community which is doorgrowclub.com. This is a Facebook group where you get to hang out with other property management entrepreneurs, all the Door Grow Hackers, connect with us, and see future episodes. We livestream these episodes into that group so you won't miss a beat. Check us out there at doorgrowclub.com. If you are interested in growing your business then reach out to us doorgrow.com. We would love to help you and see if we can help you grow your business. Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth.

Dr Carolyn Lam:                Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. I'm Dr Carolyn Lam, Associate Editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr Greg Hundley:             And I'm Greg Hundley, also Associate Editor from the Pauley Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia. Dr Carolyn Lam:                I'm so excited about our feature discussion today, Greg, because it is about a familiar but very important problem of hypertension, and we will be looking at trial results of a new drug, a first in its class type of drug. And tackling a problem that is particularly important perhaps in black patients with hypertension. Well, more very soon. First, let's discuss some papers, shall we? Do you have one? Dr Greg Hundley:             My paper is from Joseph Burgoyne from King's College in London and pertains to resveratrol. Now, resveratrol is a non-flavonoid polyphenolic compound that has been found in the skin of several fruits, with the most notable being grapes. The compound exhibits beneficial effects, including the prevention of cardiovascular neurologic diseases, cancer, metabolic syndrome, as well as it promotes bone and eye health. And in this study, the investigative team explains how resveratrol may mediate its numerous beneficial effects including lowering of blood pressure by direct thiol oxidation. Also, they demonstrate that resveratrol can counter-intuitively induce direct protein oxidation, a process that is enhanced under pro-oxidative conditions associated with disease. The oxidation of cyclic GMP dependent protein kinase 1 alpha, or PKG1 alpha, by resveratrol lowers blood pressure in hypertensive mice. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Okay. But what does that mean for us clinically, Greg? Dr Greg Hundley:             Well, the results demonstrate how blood pressure can be lowered by using resveratrol, and targeting cysteine 42, or PKG1 alpha, may provide a new class of anti-hypertensive agents. In addition, identifying additional proteins modified by resveratrol may provide new targets for therapy to treat cardiovascular disease. Carolyn, how about your first paper? Dr Carolyn Lam:                We are going to look at the further results of the ODYSSEY OUTCOMES trial. And as a reminder, ODYSSEY OUTCOMES was a double-blind randomized comparison of the PCSK9 antibody Alirocumab with placebo in almost 19,000 patients who had an acute coronary syndrome 1-12 months previously and elevated at the atherogenic lipoproteins despite intensive statin therapy.                                                 And that trial found that Alirocumab reduced the risk of the primary composite outcome of coronary heart disease, death, ischemic stroke, myocardial infarction, or unstable angina requiring hospital admissions. The current paper looked further at the effects of Alirocumab on death. Dr Greg Hundley:             So Carolyn, what did they find? Dr Carolyn Lam:                Well, there are quite a number of findings here. The first, there were fewer deaths in total that occurred with the PCSK9 inhibitor Alirocumab versus placebo, and this resulted from a non-significantly cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular deaths with Alirocumab. The second finding was that in a pre-specified analysis of more than 8,200 patients eligible for 3 or more years of follow-up, Alirocumab reduced death.                                                 And then, the third finding was that patients with non-fatal cardiovascular events were at increased risk for both cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular deaths, and a post-Hoc analysis found that compared to patients with a lower LDL, those with a baseline LDL above 100 had a greater absolute risk of death, and a larger mortality benefit with Alirocumab. In the Alirocumab group, all cause death declined with a lower achieved LDL achieved at 4 months of treatment to a level of approximately 30.                                                 So in summary, Alirocumab added to intensive statin therapy, has the potential to reduce death after acute coronary syndrome, particularly if treatment is maintained for 3 or more years, and if baseline LDL is 100 or more, or if achieved LDL is low. Dr Greg Hundley:             That's great, Carolyn. My next paper is going to talk a little bit about endothelial cells. And what I think we're going to learn is that not all endothelial cells are alike. This comes from Dr Rajat Gupta from Brigham and Women's Hospital, and I really thought this was an interesting article that used single-cell RNA sequencing to make it possible to identify and characterize cellular sub-populations. Dr Greg Hundley:             The investigative team performed enzymatic dissociation of 4 whole mouse aortas, followed by single-cell sequencing of over 10,000 cells. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Wow. What did they find? Dr Greg Hundley:             Well using cluster analysis of gene expression from the aortic cells, they identified 10 populations of cells representing each of the main arterial cell types. There were fibroblasts, vascular smooth muscle cells, endothelial cells, immune cells, including monocytes, macrophages, and lymphocytes. And importantly, there were 3 distinct endothelial cell sub-populations with differences in them driven by major functional gene programs including adhesion and lipid handling.                                                 Comparison of aortic single-cell RNA sequence data sets from normal and Western diet-fed mice suggested that these sub-populations exist under both dietary conditions and have some unified responses to diet alteration. Also, immunofluorescence using single marker genes to identify endothelial cell sub-populations showed that the VCAM1 positive population was spatially located in regions of disturbed flow like the lesser curve of the aorta. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Okay. So bring it home for us, Greg. What does this mean clinically? Dr Greg Hundley:             Yeah exactly, Carolyn. So, characterizing functional sub-populations may serve as a novel method for understanding endothelial health in patients with vascular disease. And although aortic endothelial cell sub-populations demonstrate some unified responses to vascular disease relevant stimuli, like a Western diet, functionally different sub-populations may contribute differentially to vascular diseases, enabling sub-population targeted therapies to perhaps be implemented in the future. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Cool. So Greg, cardiomyopathies have often been seen as genetic in origin, but what about potentially modifiable causes? So, this next paper that I picked looked at that, and it's from corresponding author Dr Rosengren from Sahlgrenska University in Gothenburg, Sweden, who with her colleagues, sought to investigate a potential link between obesity in adolescence and being diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in adulthood.                                                 So, this was a nation-wide register-based prospective cohort study of almost 1 million 690,000 adolescent men who were enlisted for compulsory military service from 1969 to 2005. Now at baseline, body mass index, blood pressure, and medical disorders were registered, along with test results for fitness and muscle strength. Cardiomyopathy diagnosis was then identified from the National Hospital Register and Cause of Death Register.                                                 So, they found that during a median follow-up of 27 years, 4,477 cases of cardiomyopathy were identified, of which 59% were dilated, 15% were hypertrophic, and 11% were alcohol or drug-induced. Increasing body mass index, or BMI, was strongly associated with elevated risk of cardiomyopathy, especially dilated cardiomyopathy, starting at levels considered normal, meaning a BMI of 22.5 to less than 25 kilograms per squared meters.                                                 And this was even after adjusting for age, years, center, and baseline comorbidities. There was a more than 8 fold increased risk of cardiomyopathy at a body mass index of 35 and above, compared with a BMI of between 18.5 and less than 20. Dr Greg Hundley:             So, it sounds like BMI elevations and cardiomyopathies don't go together. So, what are the clinical implications? Dr Carolyn Lam:                This really shows that even mildly elevated body weight in late adolescence may contribute to being diagnosed with cardiomyopathy in adulthood. So, the already marked importance of weight control in youth is really further strengthened by these findings, as well as the greater evidence for obesity as a potential important cause of adverse cardiac remodeling that is independent of clinically evident ischemic heart disease. Dr Greg Hundley:             Outstanding. So, BMI, not good. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Nope, Greg. High BMI, not good. That was fun, Greg. So, shall we move on to our feature discussion? Dr Greg Hundley:             Absolutely. Dr Carolyn Lam:                For our feature discussion today, we are talking about a familiar problem, but just so very important, and that is hypertension. And guess what? Our feature paper discusses a new first in class centrally-acting renin-angiotensin system blocker that has such remarkable initial results. I am so pleased to have with us the corresponding author for the paper, Dr Keith Ferdinand from Tulane University School of Medicine, as well as our Guest Editor, Dr David Calhoun from University of Alabama and Birmingham.                                                 Keith, could you start by telling us a little bit about the kinds of patients you see there in New Orleans that struggles with hypertension control perhaps? And then, please tell us about Firibastat. Dr Keith Ferdinand:         I'm in New Orleans. In fact, I'm a native New Orleans. And as you know, most of the south and southeast and part of the United States has a high proportion of African American or US blacks. This population has higher rates of hypertension, increased prevalence, more severe hypertension, and more uncontrolled hypertension.                                                 We also note in the south that there tends to be an increase in obesity, which is a powerful risk factor for all patients with hypertension, regardless of race or ethnicity. And unfortunately, the rates of obesity appear to be increasing. So based on the fact that we have an increase in obesity, we have many patients whose blood pressures are not controlled, and some of the previous data have suggested less response to first step or monotherapy with ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, I initiated a trial with a first in its kind oral active brain aminopeptidase A inhibitor. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Wow. Could you tell us a little bit more about brain aminopeptidase, and this new drug Firibastat? Dr Keith Ferdinand:         Most people don't know anything about this molecule, because this is something that was discovered by some French physiologists. They approached me to design the clinical trial here in the United States. And what it does is, it blocks the conversion of angiotensin II to angiotensin III in the brain. Angiotensin III is actually the active component of the renin-angiotensin system centrally, and if you block angiotensin III production, it has a triple therapy effect.                                                 One is that it causes the diuresis. It decreases sympathetic tone, and it stimulates the carotid artery, such that you have, again, a decrease in sympathetic tone. Now, why choose it for patients who are obese, and why want to include a large proportion of non-Hispanic blacks here in the United States? Well, the reasons are that when you look at some of the bench research using rats, it appears to have a more beneficial effect in DOCA-salt rats, which is a model for salt-resistant hypertension.                                                 Salt-resistant hypertension is more common in blacks, more common in patients with obesity, and may indeed be one of the reasons why monotherapy or first-step with conventional renin-angiotensin system agents, specifically ACE inhibitors and ARBs, have not been as effective in the past. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Gosh. That is so interesting, and it's really making me think about my patients too here in Asia, where we have a lot of salt-sensitive hypertension. Now, could you please tell us about the trial you did, and what you found? Dr Keith Ferdinand:         We looked at a cohort of patients. All of the patients were overweight and obese. They were washed out for 2 weeks, and had a systolic blood pressure of 145-170, and a diastolic of less than 105. We wanted to get at least 50% self-identified blacks or Hispanics, and I suspect that any patient who meets this phenotype, and that would include Asians, or even Whites, may respond similarly.                                                 We then placed them in an open label format, and I can discuss why we used an open label, with monotherapy with Firibastat. After 2 weeks, we then titrated the dose level from 250 twice daily to 500 twice daily if needed, and we had a low dose thiazide and hydrochlorothiazide 25 mg addition, if needed, for escape, if patients had a blood pressure greater than 160/100.                                                 The other thing that was interesting and unique about this particular trial is that we used the automatic office blood pressure, where the blood pressure was taken 6 times. The first time was discarded, and then averaged, without a particular doctor or a nurse being there to do the blood pressure. We felt that this was a valid means of getting blood pressure loaded. It tends to mimic, to a large extent, what you see in 24 hour inventory daytime systolic blood pressure.                                                 So, this was a valid means of measuring blood pressure loads. This was a relatively high risk patients. And these were patients whom, previously, probably would not have responded as well to monotherapy with ACE inhibitors or ARBs. Dr Carolyn Lam:                That's really clear, and clever design. I would love to hear a little bit more about why the open label, and of course, the results. Dr Keith Ferdinand:         Well, that's one of the criticisms of this study, but actually, we presented to the FDA when we were discussing designing this trial, perhaps doing a placebo control trial. And we were told by the FDA that if you use a valid means of measuring blood pressure load, so that would be ambulatory blood pressure, or automated office blood pressure, that a placebo would not be necessary, because those means of checking blood pressure load would be considered a true valid means of finding a blood pressure effect.                                                 The other thing is, dealing with minority patients, and really dealing with patients in general, for blood pressure, if they have substantial hypertension, the message has been out there that this is a killer and cause of cardiovascular disease. It would probably have been very difficult to enroll the patients, you've got 254 patients in a national study. It would have been very difficult to enroll these patients, who would have known easily that they had substantial elevation of blood pressure, and we said, "You know, 50% chance you're going to get a sugar pill that has no effect." Dr Carolyn Lam:                Right. Right. Very nice. The results? Dr Keith Ferdinand:         Well, the results were a robust 9.7 mm reduction in systolic blood pressure. At day 56, the p-value was less than 0.0001. And when you do a sub-group analysis of patients who were in the study, it was effective for persons who are under 65, or over 65, male or female. All patients were overweight, and the patients who were obese, with a BMI of 30 or above, had a trend towards even a better blood pressure effect, which again, is not seen with first step with conventional ACE and ARBs.                                                 We also did an analysis based on black and non-black, and there was no difference, again with the trend towards the black patients actually doing fairly well. So, the take home from the particular study was this is the first in its kind, new approach to central Ras blockage with aminopeptidase A inhibitor, that was effective in a population which was overweight and obese, with over 50% minority, and showed substantial blood pressure reduction using a valid means of checking blood pressure, the automated blood pressure in the clinic. Dr Carolyn Lam                  Keith, congratulations. A very important study. David, could I bring you in here? What were your thoughts as you were managing this paper, and what do you think are the future steps here? Dr David Calhoun:            Looking at the submission, I was obviously excited about the results and the potential implications. I think, like Keith, in treating a lot of resistant or obesity-related hypertension, we're frustrated that control rates are not better, that the initial response to monotherapy is not better, and that's particularly true of Ras blockers. I think many of us are investigating the initial use of Ras blockers for a variety of reasons related to outcome benefit and reduction in incident and diabetes.                                                 So, I know I like to start with such an agent. I'm particularly excited that there may be, firstly, a new opportunity to block the Ras system, and potentially comparable or even better in the most difficult patients to treat. That is, the African American and the Hispanic patients, who often have very severe hypertension. So, my initial reading was I was very excited to see the potential, and that was brought out by the reviews as well. They shared my excitement. So, I'm looking forward to Keith advancing this compound. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Indeed. Keith, I'm sure everyone's thinking now, wow, remarkable results. What's the drawbacks? How well-tolerated was this drug? Dr Keith Ferdinand:         One of the drawbacks is that the structure of Firibastat included a sulfhydryl group. And we saw with early studies with captopril, which also has a sulfhydryl group, some skin rash, and we saw those similar changes with some of the patients in this particular study. At least 2 of them were suggested to potentially have erythema multiforme, although this was not proven. This was an investigator initiated adverse event.                                                 So, I don't know if we're going to be able to structure a similar type of aminopeptidase inhibitor without a sulfhydryl group. The other thing is that in its presence formulation, it's given twice daily. We know optimally you'd like to have a long-acting agent that can be given once daily. And I don't think we need a placebo control trial, but we may need to do a trial where patients are on 2 or more medications, and then, you add the Firibastat versus adding placebo. But, I don't think at this particular point, we need to get some of these more difficult to treat patients, and just place them on placebo, and watch and see what happens.                                                 We know what happens. The blood pressure goes up. Many of them may have acute heart failure, or progression of renal failure. And I just don't think it's necessary. And the FDA doesn't think it's necessary to prove that hypothesis. Dr Carolyn Lam:                David, what do you think about that? Do we need a placebo control trial? And that use of ambulatory blood pressure, that's novel aspects of this trial too. Dr David Calhoun:            I think use of placebo comparison has been for the traditional or conventional approach. I think most investigators, most clinicians, sort of anticipate seeing the placebo corrected effect. So, I think the results would have been, or will be potentially, more compelling if that's done. But, I can also appreciate Keith's contention, and it sounds like the FDA, that in this day and age, with use of automated office blood pressure measurements tend to minimize that white coat effect, and particularly true of ambulatory monitoring, that it may be that not using a placebo comparison maybe is compelling as well. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Indeed. I really enjoy actually just digging deep into the study like this. Keith, if I could just ask for some final words from you, learning lessons, or even what have you got planned next. Dr Keith Ferdinand:         The first lesson is, we need to continue to pay attention to hypertension. It's kind of been placed on the back burner with more interest now in diabetes and sugar, a lot of interest in lipids because of some of the new agents. But if you look across the globe, Asians, blacks, whites, regardless of race or ethnicity or geography, hypertension is the most potent cardiovascular risk factor, and I think we need to continue to address that.                                                 In terms of this particular agent, I believe that we will have to have some sort of placebo arm, but again, I think it's going to be built on a conventional medication, and then randomized with Firibastat versus placebo on top of conventional medications. In a more severe or a more difficult to treat hypertension, I'm just not really convinced that we need to do a purely placebo arm. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Great, Keith. And David, how about yourself? Any take home messages? Dr David Calhoun:            I think when there's a new in-class compound, I think that's always exciting, particularly when it has the initial results, preliminary results, that Keith is reporting. As many agents as there are out there to treat hypertension, we still are not doing as well as we should be. I think it can only help to have additional classes of agents as therapeutic options, and I think that's particularly true with minority patients, who are, as Keith has indicated, are at the biggest need in terms of controlling blood pressure. Keith, these initial results are very exciting, and I look forward to future studies. Dr Carolyn Lam:                Completely sharing your enthusiasm here. Thank you so much, Keith, for publishing this remarkable paper with us at Circulation. Thank you, David, for helping us manage it.                                                 And thank you, audience, for joining us today. You've been listening to Circulation on the Run. Don't forget to tune in again next week.                                                 This program is copyright American Heart Association 2019.  

Kate got a dog! A doggy dog of her very own. And you know what goes together well, like peaches and cream? Dogs and picture books. So Betsy had to figure out a classic dog picture book. And lo and behold she realized that in spite of its relative fame the show had never done a book about this particular dirty dirty dog. In the course of things Betsy and Kate solve the mystery of why Harry never rolls in mud. Meanwhile, this is a VERY springtime-related book. We hope you appreciate the robins and the daffodils. Here in February, our eyes are hungry for any and all spring things. Show Notes: - Here's an obit for Margaret Bloy Graham: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/books/margaret-bloy-graham-harry-the-dirty-dog-illustrator-dies-at-94.html - And another article about her from WBUR: https://www.wbur.org/artery/2015/04/17/margaret-bloy-graham - The book was #43 on the Top 100 Picture Books Poll: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2012/05/29/top-100-picture-books-43-harry-the-dirty-dog-by-gene-zion-illustrated-by-margaret-bloy-graham/ - Curious to see the Complete Listing of All Public Children's Literature Statues in the United States? Well here it is: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2017/03/28/updated-the-complete-listing-of-all-public-childrens-literature-statues-in-the-united-states/ - And at Bookworm Gardens in Sheboygan, WI you'll find this adorable little Harry. You can clean him. Look at that adorable guy!! http://www.bookwormgardens.org/ - I wasn't wrong. The Scottish Granny did read I Need a New Bum. Here, you can watch her yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQoYjU2Fh0M For the full Show Notes please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2019/02/25/fuse-8-n-kate-harry-the-dirty-dog-by-gene-zion-ill-margaret-bloy-graham/

So, what are the most popular resolutions for the New Year in the United States? Well, listen in and we will tell you! Enjoy!

I don't know if you've heard, but Russia Hacked the Election. Well, kinda. The entire fiasco has become more of a nebulous talking point designed to score political points than anything we can focus on and sink our teeth into. But here's the thing: Russia really did launch a coordinated operation to disrupt our system, and through all the muck and mess, we still have to deal with it. Today's guest is an ex-US military Psychological Operations Specialist with an incredible amount of insight into what happened, why, and perhaps most importantly, what we can do about it. Is Russia an existential threat to the United States? Well, no, they're not. But by fomenting internal divisions, they may, in the end, get exactly what they want: A significantly weakened America defined by infighting and internal distrust.

Did you know there's an entire country north of The United States? We'll learn more about this mysterious land with today's guest judge, Slate's unofficial Canada correspondent, Chris Berube. He tells us that Canadians call seltzer "club soda." Go figure: It's just like Canadians to figure out how to spell "seltzer" with the letter "U." (Also, we are aware club soda is technically different from seltzer. Please send your angry letters to Canada Dry, c/o Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc.) In today's final semifinal, Saratoga and Adirondack Lemon Lime compete to advance to the final final.

It is no doubt that sometimes if not all the time, humans get very greedy. Well, there is no exception to the transportation industry and we have the stories to prove it. Trucking Scams are very much real.  But what sort of trucking scams could possibly be so crazy that they are worldwide trucking scams, or even scams that form in Canada and spread through the good old United States? Well, this week we will be tearing down each and every one of these crazy trucking scams out there and try to figure out what was going on in these industry leaders minds! www.talkcdl.com www.talkcdl.com/listen-live www.facebook.com/talkcdl www.twitter.com/talkcdl

Tired of the election coverage here in the United States? Well, why not settle down with a non-controversial episode of Listen to the Prophets? Well, if you take out the argument over Klingon boob windows, it's non-controversial. Luckily most of the episode is dedicated to coverage of the first season episode "Captive Pursuit" which has Chief O'Brien meeting up with a fugitive alien from the Gamma Quadrant (who, coincidentally does NOT try and kill anyone with a forklift) who is being hunted by some proto-Jem'Hadar. We talk about Sisko's lax command style, O'Brien's flagrant disregard of the chain of command, and how one interprets the Prime Directive in the frontiers of space. All of this, plus feedback from you wonderful listeners can be heard when you download the show and get ready...to Listen to the Prophets.Feedback for this show can be sent to: listentotheprophets@gmail.comListen to the Prophets is a proud member of the Two True Freaks! (http://www.twotruefreaks.com/main.php) family of podcasts, the best place on the internet to find shows about Star Wars, Star Trek, Comics, Movies, and anything else that the modern geek could ever want. The show can be found on iTunes by searching for Two True Freaks Presents: Listen to the Prophets or it can be downloaded from the website directly here. And if you are downloading the show through iTunes, please be sure to leave a rating, hopefully a FIVE STAR RATING, because every rating we get helps people to know that the show is out there. Thanks for downloading, and come back next time and take some time to...LISTEN TO THE PROPHETS.

Tired of the election coverage here in the United States? Well, why not settle down with a non-controversial episode of Listen to the Prophets? Well, if you take out the argument over Klingon boob windows, it's non-controversial. Luckily most of the episode is dedicated to coverage of the first season episode "Captive Pursuit" which has Chief O'Brien meeting up with a fugitive alien from the Gamma Quadrant (who, coincidentally does NOT try and kill anyone with a forklift) who is being hunted by some proto-Jem'Hadar. We talk about Sisko's lax command style, O'Brien's flagrant disregard of the chain of command, and how one interprets the Prime Directive in the frontiers of space. All of this, plus feedback from you wonderful listeners can be heard when you download the show and get ready...to Listen to the Prophets.Feedback for this show can be sent to: listentotheprophets@gmail.comListen to the Prophets is a proud member of the Two True Freaks! (http://www.twotruefreaks.com/main.php) family of podcasts, the best place on the internet to find shows about Star Wars, Star Trek, Comics, Movies, and anything else that the modern geek could ever want. The show can be found on iTunes by searching for Two True Freaks Presents: Listen to the Prophets or it can be downloaded from the website directly here. And if you are downloading the show through iTunes, please be sure to leave a rating, hopefully a FIVE STAR RATING, because every rating we get helps people to know that the show is out there. Thanks for downloading, and come back next time and take some time to...LISTEN TO THE PROPHETS.

***HOW WAS THE BUILD TOWARD WRESTLEMANIA THIS YEAR? LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK, CALL US AT (646)915-9116, OR E-MAIL US AT ATOMICDROP@MYWAY.COM.*** This is it! Just 5 nights away from the industry's biggest event, Wrestlemania! How was the final hype for WWE's pay-per-view extravaganza? We'll name our greatest WM match EVER as well as breakdown the entire Mania card and how it stacks up with others in recent memory. Don't forget about TNA either. Fresh off of Destination X, the first chapter in the Hogan-Bischoff Era will end at Lockdown in April. How are things stacking up for the #2 promotion in the United States? We'll have this and a whole lot more including your Monday Night Breakdown on the official Tuesday Night Countdown to WWE NXT, the Atomic Drop Show! Co-hosts Justin Tyme and Kyle Cruise discuss news and run down from the past week's slate of WWE and TNA shows, not to mention a few random rants and thoughts along the way. Recorded from opposite sides of the U.S. - Hilton, NY and Long Beach, CA. So join the duo every week for your weekly does of pro wrestling insanity news! Our show is every Tuesday LIVE at 9 p.m. EST/ 6 p.m. PST, right before your weekly dose of WWE NXT! Our call-in number is (646) 915-9116, so feel free to call us up and chat it up with a couple wrestling fans just like you.

What would you do if you were President of the United States? Well that's exactly what the kids from Room 17 wanted to find out after reading the book IF I WERE PRESIDENT BY KATHERINE STIER. In this quadcast, Sadie and Takashi asked Hamilton's staff and students what they would do. Listen to hear sometimes thoughtful, sometimes funny responses.