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Dig into VPM's Virginia Home Grown [powerpress]

VPM higher education reporter Megan Pauly speaks to former staff members of Virginia Commonwealth University's Division of Inclusive Excellence.     In the podcast: VPM News reporter Megan Pauly speaks to former staff of VCU's shuttered diversity office. 

International students and alumni in Virginia have their visas or visa eligibility terminated. In other news: Virginians can save on power bills with power grid improvements —and more Central Virginia news.    VPM's Spring 2025 membership campaign has been extended to April 20. Right now, several challenges are ongoing that can double your support of our mission. Click or tap here to learn more. 

VPM News editor Whittney Evans digs in to answer this Curious Commonwealth: What does the data tell us about how much Virginia recycles? Submit your own question at vpm.org/curious.   VPM's Spring 2025 membership campaign ends on April 18. Right now, several challenges are ongoing that can double your support of our mission. Click or tap here to learn more. 

Apple cider vinegar How you tryna win de war Ice and sugar, hufflepuff Tell me when you've had enough WILL FERRELL YOU IN TROUBLE NOW, GUH. There's not even a scrap of shirt beneath his worn and tired full coverage overalls—well, once full coverage, anyway. It might have been a long time since these overalls “fully covered” anything. Oh how that demon attacked me in my sleep last night. Like that part. Don't worry about it, I've got a sayonce coming up that should nip that in the bud. But first, I gotta stop at target. You—have to stop at target before a seance? Traditionally, yes— Really. MAM! Wait, hold the phone for about four full measures here— What the fuck did I write last year?! Here we go. DETH MCFARLENE Is this a musical number? No, but— What the fuck did I write last year. Let's go. Fuck. What did I do ast night. DIPLO Follow me. Dude! What are you wearing. Sneakers. Oh good. Diplo's back. A flashback. Television (TV) is a telecommunicationmedium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass mediumfor advertising, entertainment, news, and sports. The medium is capable of more than "radio broadcasting," which refers to an audio signal sent to radio receivers. I'm not suicidal, I'm sinusoidal Wave to the fans Smile at the camera Primordial, in fact hereditary is this, Class dismissed Transmission, diminished, Ad domini. Gave no respect for time Which I am I'd no where to run Overcast, but still sunglasses And masks, Bang pots and pans Laugh at the shogun No wonder I'm stuck and I'm having no fun Too much attacks and actually I'm a no one Oh you wanted to sit on top of the escalator Waiting for eight debators and robots No debit card, here We're cashless sir But that's just the tip of the iceberg When you're store bought and Why do we rely on the founding father's when they're so unoriginal Google maps don't know if imm in New York Or London Foggy! Honestly, Fuck my decks— I just want a deck and some long grass Or to complain about cutting If I end up in the bathtub stuttering But watering lawns upstate is okay I'ma be pissed off It's a long story Long Island Long October Oh, Long Johnson I'm obsessed with this place. I have no idea why. I'm obsessed with this building. But apparently, the transmitters aren't even there. They're on the World Trade Center! Which… makes sense. Considering. Previously on, Enter The Multiverse… Yo… what is that? Go this way. Ok. No, not that way. Ok. This way. Why in the fuck do I always end up here on accident anyway? Good question. But not good enough answers. [CHER has answers.] Goddammit! I went to the Macy's Day Parade to see Cher! Also previously ! I stayed all the way to the end, And all I got was a lizard on a tricycle I turned into a popcicle, Adopted into some family With Rutgers as traditional And entered into something else entirely; I went within the Television, I delivered them a high stakes game, And lived a high concept action-adventure. I made my best mixtapes inside a homeless shelter. I dissociated I was a blonde hot guy Living up in hotel luxe A hot model celebrity With a no limit heavy metal credit cards And I lost my medal On the devil's birthday So I had it hard And ate nothing but bananas Now I'm caught up in my blue suits and sweater vests Blue suits and sweater vests Oh look, They weaponized Skrillex again What gives? Blue suits and sweater vests And sweater weather Once again It's all the same event You ever wondered what was hallmark after? You ever wonder, lemon? Hark, the heartless Harold preaches Then, I lost it I was reaching under Regis Rest in peace, I guess Or Gains with grains Just rest in pieces Breakfast sandwhiches And Englishmen, English muffin And love don't last If I don't this badly want to fuck him Seven years and counting It begins at sundown Almost wasn't sabbath But now here's the run down I'm in slumber Closest cavern to the underworld But trust me, Still above you. Something's broadcasting at a ultra high frequency high enough to reach me in my mind. Assimilate and simulation Tempurpedic dreams and then lamenting That I had a dream Remembering the things he reads I may or may not have [redacted] The aftermath of “That never happened.” I must agree. It's a patriarch and also just, A hierarchy. There are three Kings and a dog. There are four nights and a fight morning Groggy hosts and jumping frogs, Werewolves and flowers spring from lust like morning glory. I want the mouse's head— I want the eyes of masters I want the heart of gold, But have it up on false hope, And I grew back as diamonds I cut both my eyes out And still remained the one of providence Not of mind's eye, But of the soul, As seen on every dollar. I was beginning to understand how the media used people like Sonny and Jim to manipulate and capture the attention of people like me— excluding altogether the riding theory that everything was me and that this was some part of my overall master plan somehow, it still had alluded me altogether as to why or what was happening. I hadn't entirely been left to rot or led to slaughter, but I was still just hanging by a string. Sonny dropped a new album that had rendered me almost entirely unable to create music; suddenly I had no drive for it, no motivation, as if it were some kind of dark curse or shadow. Not only was I suddenly uninterested in music, I was completely devoid of the ability I had for it; now everything from Skrillex to NBC seemed like business— if I were expendable and without use to any of these media conglomerates or entities, what was it all for? Perhaps a ruse to continue human experimentation; my mind had been shattered by the events that had been orchestrated in the homeless shelter— and more of it continued even once I had exited under the falsehood of escape with the slamming doors and motorcycles; it began to seem as if I was simply a glorified lab rat— and they were using desirable men as fuel and bait to illicit a desirable response in one way or another, perhaps for experimentation or study or even worse, entertainment for the elites— but either way, I wasn't being paid so much as housed and fe: there was no benefit in doing anything, especially making music. Much like a lab rat, housed— or rather, trapped— and fed, and then tormented. Will the rat's head explode? Will this result in behavioral differences? Will the rat be rendered dysfunctional? We don't know. But it's really just a rat. There were days of certain peace and yet never enough to fully recover; the cycle would begin over again, and rather than making progress, I began to see and feel the manipulation at play. Perhaps nothing was at stake for anyone but me; between all the events and occurrences in expanse from Skrillex to Jimmy Fallon, there had to have been hundreds of us in some kind of talent pool. Tools of the trade. But now I was somewhat curious: what exactly had I written over the last year that seem to have shifted reality entirely. I knew it contained information sensitive enough for it to have been partially redacted— but that's all I knew. What was it? Someone had read my writings, and it was obvious that at least one reader had ties directly to the conglomerate media, however— my numbers were frozen. My streams were almost not even being listened to all of a sudden, and my YouTube was receiving no traffic. Was someone shadow banning all of me from the public eye? And for what purpose? I had finally put forth the work and effort to make everything from Skrillex to Fallon make sense, but now it didn't; I was letting go under the assumption that it all had to have been to allow me to create music— but the numbers showed a different story. The numbers showed that nobody liked me, or was was interested, or cared about my work. So what, then, was the point. I wasn't going to stop and focus on the writing, because it wasn't what I wanted. The writing came in blurred patches and visions and states of mind that were turbulent fog; I hadn't the slightest clue at all what I had written in the redactions or the entries that surrounded it— but I knew there was more of it unpublished than published, and that I had tried to keep a majority of it offline. Still, I was being manipulated— the neighbor girl obviously at one point having been instructed to mention gwenyth Paltrow and suffocate me— slamming the doors each time I would bathe or shower and then attempting to pretend to be my friend to try to get some sort of informstion; there was nobody I could trust. It seems my mind was being bent and twisted in every which way by everyone around just to see what I would do. Would I write about it? What would I write about it? It didn't matter because i didn't want to be a writer, nor according to the newest series of documentaries on SNL, was I qualified. I wasn't qualified for anything much and so I was the perfect target for the bizzare string of mysteries that had been my existence in New York— and all-and-all, I fucking hated it. I wasn't getting anywhere or going anywhere, and the noise was cruel. My stomach hurt and I was always tired, and I wanted to die. I had no friends, no love, and now, no motivation. So the worst thing that could happen was a Skrillex album, And it did. Then, instead of wanting to die, because that would be stupid— I just wanted to do something else. But what? Fuck music— and certainly increasingly— fuck the media. It was playing with my mind, and I had no weapons to fight with besides the talents the algorithm was telling me wasn't worth anything— I wasn't getting billions of streams because I wasn't on the frequency of billions or people, nor was I equipped with the mathematics to tap into their frequency— or did I? The industry had the equation, and had been fiddling with me for years — the industry itself. But in my own mind, even, I was one of many ‘variables', and even somewhat disposable. I hadn't been paid and I wasn't meeting the standard and the allure that people wanted; the quality of production suffered in lack of budget, and I was aging, growing tired, and iratable because over all— it was nothing that I ever wanted into my adult life. This all had just happened by accident, and I would have traded all the gold in the world for something normal if I had the option. But I didn't. To use your gift at Fabletics please visit before April 25 Reply STOP to opt-out. Subscriptions on subscriptions Dystopian rebefuel Oceans of Ayre Drama From your eye lashes., To the lips I draw on mine, The lines in the sand of time The art or you is what I love The canvas behind I know nothing of Abandoned. Oh look at that, pottery after all. We're not in a love game! This cannot be a love game. This is not a love game. They'll kill us all, a love game! She had my lunch I love her voice I love her voice I hung up the phone The office was upside down It just work They all know about it Madonna's body. It was already a mess, and I made it worse Long nights at the office Long nights and work wives Meanwhile, she's downstairs with the order Can't find my cash, so i borrow yours But she knows about it And I love madonna I just gotta hold on She's downstairs with the order And I took too long Pick up the phone and its no wonder we love her she's got two orders And one of them's cold, now It's been two hours And I'm in the wings of your final performance Tear on the perforated line, And sign on the dotted Smile and nod, boys- Penguin waddle She's downstairs with the order No wonder you love her No wonder How many sunflowers has Sonny? How many flowergirls How many weddings All around the world, the gopher What do you go for? Bets on all horses I lost no money Gag order, huh? Persona Non Grata Personofied gratification Or horror, or What? Oh, I won an award post mortem Go figure No stardom No wonder Don't start here [The Identity Crisis] The identity crisis, A loose knit muse, A fog of confusion At most, let with offline regaining of conciousness. No more monsters? All blondes are. Let them have you No grapple promotions (I know I can't afford you) New friends for relevance Prototypes of your tools Forward all immortals I'll see you when your shows stop Freckled glances Eyes reflecting light How strong I am Demolish monsters Social structure, constructs Not fair, are I? Nor earned, Only fair skinned Access Access Access denied. Crookshanks, old boy! The man turns around almost as if he doesn't want to, but obliges the other man, as he comes running towards him. My Goodness, you stink. Why of course! I'm a dog! {Enter The Multiverse} [The Festival Project.™] COPYRIGHT © THE FESTIVAL PROJECT 2018-2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © -U.™ TRANSCRIPT: (Uncorrected, cause haha) Did I promise another episode? I don't have coffee. That's a sin. I need coffee right now. I feel like I all everything just got drained out of me. Everything just got drained out of me. I don't even feel like doing what I was doing before. I'll put out the EP later. Maybe that's it. I'm just procrastinating. I'm also playing this game, but I thought it would work better. I thought it would work better as one of my skits, or sketches or whatever, so I put it in my sketchbook... because I've been writing sketch comedy. I stopped for a while and I thought it was over. I was like, ”oh, no, I guess I'd I guess it's not gonna happen anymore. “ And then all of a sudden this book it just writes in itself sometimes. you know, it's like a Tom Riddle thing. Anyway, once what's uh what is that? What the fuck? Maybe it's cause I— no. it's not cause I ate, I ate because all the energy got drained from my body. I gotta go somewhere else. I'm thinking like, what's in the Bahamas. I don't know, probably something similar to this fucking street corner in Brooklyn, New York. I I gotta go somewhere else. I gotta go somewhere opposite. like Europe. Europe, that sounds nice. Yeah, you know, like, maybe nice. I've heard that's a place. Yeah. expanding my horizons and things. Okay, so what am I gonna talk about for an hour, cooking? cleaning? I've been doing those things. Yeah, Saturday is usually my like rest day, but I did just do an hour on the Pelotone, cause I had to audition that first episode. It worked out well enough that I had decided to come back for another episode. Let me get it off the line now., I'm still waiting on my pancakes. I'm not gonna get off line. they said by ten. I'm like,Yo, that's a lot. It said that all day, but I can't miss it this time; somebody stole my fucking pancakes and I gotta get these albums done. I don't know why. I guess well, it's cause I'm I feel like rarity is drinking and so well, it's already jinx. I've already talked about it well, I've been trying to promote rarity. No, still out for delivery. That's a long delivery. It's okay. I haven't missed it, though, which is the point. I don't wanna miss it. I like yesterday I looked away for a second and there was like an o, pancakes are gone, there's gonna be no coconut milk. as upsetting. It's shelf stable. and they charge like seven fucking bucks a box over at the store that's close. So and just not have coconut milk, and it's not have spinach fettuccine. anyway, what what did I have? Oh, I make this. It's like I call it dog food, cause that's kind of what it is. I'm not gonna lie, but it's like mad good, it's a it's like rice. It's like a fried rice. My dad used to make it growing up, but when I was making when he was making it when I was growing up, it was like with bacon, it's like leftovers from breakfast yesterday, but today. and so here's how you make it, since I don't eat bacon anymore. I use tofu as a replacement, but it's like bacon bits with rice and eggs. I also don't eat eggs anymore, so I just use tofu instead of bacon and eggs. It's like bacon and eggs with rice, you fry it all together with, like, onions, and then you eat it. It's like the only time it's acceptable to eat rice with ketchup. I don't know anybody that eats rice with ketchup. If you do that, like, I actually hit me up. Like, if that's like something that you do. I I'm like interested in you as a human, cause that's weird. That's weird, actually, you know what? like, there's gonna there's like a well, I have a website, so I'm you.guru, so it has a blog, and you could actually leave comments on it. So I'm just putting that out there. the script or whatever, when it goes up on my website, you can leave comments. If you eat ketchup on rice, please leave a comment. Please tell me like what made you do that. Why do you do that? Why why do you just regular rice with ketchup? Like, regular rice goes with like soy sauce? Or like, honestly, you get you don't have to have anything on regular rice if you just season it, right? Like, you could just like a little bit of like whatever. or like just slice up the garlic real thin, so that it's not like chunky, but that it flavors the whole. I've been getting really good at rice and really good at rice. That's probably why the pancakes are like, bro. You't get your pancakes when you get the leg yeah. I was like, I gotta go to the store today? I don't feel like it. I really don't. I don't wanna go outside. I like, I don't. First of all, it's Saturday, I hate going out in New York on a Saturday, like Saturday, Saturday night. I don't wanna do that. I don't do that. Like that's what like most people work 9 to 5. Monday through Friday. That's stupid. Like, I feel like they should do like a track system. Like, I know that they do, but most like it's so stupid to me that a majority of people work nine to five. Like they need to do track systems. Like, so that way they're cause there's two rush hours that each last four hours. That's fucked up. Like, okay. So like the rush hour is basically just going to be like the work day. Like, the work day, basically. I mean, coffee. I need coffee. Where have I up during the day? Because I'm not producing, I am producing. I'm producing. I thought I actually thought about calling this fucking EP that I'm dropping. They're gonna make it an album. I know they are. I'm I thought about calling it day music, cause I've made most of it during the day by complete accident. although maybe, I don't know, I like I have some uh, what's it? I have some, uh plants in my window, cause I had them on the counter with just artificial light and they were kind of liker. I was like, I don't know, I I don't think they're gonna make it. So I moved it to I moved them to the window sill when it started to get warmer and I didn't feel like they were gonna freeze. And just a week in the window sill, where my window sill doesn't get almost any light, but it's still the lightest place in the apartment, and it's crazy how the roots just like sprung out of nowhere. My apartment gets like almost no light, almost no light. It faces like like the sun goes perpendicular. but it's crazy because my apartment faces like I like all these astrological events over the last year have been like in my direct, like alignment. It's been the nutsest thing. like I I prefer facing west all the time, like, I don't know why that's just how it goes. I think it's cause I was born, like, in the Pacific Ocean, not literally in it, but on like a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean. And so just west, just west facing seems correct to me. and it's so weird anytime, maybe that's just why I just don't feel right here. I've been facing what where am I facing? I don't fucking know, I don't fucking care. I don't need to say any more about where I am. Like my whereabouts need to be less spoken of, because people obviously know where the fuck I'm at. I don't know. I hope they like the lights. I like the well, it made them shut up. It was that was my little that was my little piece of conformity. I did, I did my lights green on Saint Patrick's Day. and they were like, oh. gave me a peaceful night of rest. That was like the quietest night I've had in a long time. It's been quieter. It's not like completely sane, but it's been quieter. I think I'm pretty sure it's cause I've been complaining. I'm like bro, this is not cool. not cool behavior from people. like multiple areas. I'm like, oh, it's fucked up, you can't pen you like, you can't technically complain correctly if it's not coming from one place, which is why I'm like, oh, I think all these people are on the same team. Like, I think they're all just like, on one, like, antagonist team, and they're like, yo, okay, like, we'll get it with the motcycles on this side, and then elect we'll slam the doors on that side. and then it see it seems crazy if you complain about both of those things, cause they seem entirely disconnected. but sometimes it's just like slap, slap, slap, and I'm like,Yo, what the fuck is this going on? I don't know what's happening. Yesterday I left my apartment to get the pancakes that we' not there, and it's straight up just smoked like feces, just feces, and I realized I was like bro, I haven't left my apartment and like three or four days. I do have they're they're gonna make it an album. I know. I decided, well, actually, somebody else decided. cause I woke up and it was like, yo, this EP is called all the rage. and I was like, okay. I didn't decide this. I didn't I had it like in the cloud or whatever is like untitled house AP EP, maybe. And then just to make it an I think just to make sure that it goes down as the EP and not an album, cause it's not. My albums are concept albums. This was not a concept. this was like, let me distract myself from whatever the fuck is bothering me. Bothering me, yeah, it's gonna come out at some point, they're like a tiny New Yorker that lives inside of me. is it might be like a Boston person. I'm not sure. I don't think so. I didn't spend enough time in Boston for anybody from Boston to live inside of me. Then again, I kind of have this weird biocentric god complex where it's like, well, everything is inside of me. even the shitty things. I already said that once before, but I'm it's pretty much like like affirming itself. like daily. I'm like, oh, this is this is something I did. I did this, which sucks. It makes me responsible for all the shitty things as well. I'm like, oh. oh, I don't know how to fix this. I don't. Like, I think about things like that. I'm like, oh, yeah. Like, I don't think about, like politics and like the general sense of like, you know, fighting and going back and forth and like spending money or whatever, like on a small scale, but I think about it on a large scale, like like, what are we gonna do? and we outgrow this planet? Like, we already outgrew this planet. What like like, now what, you know, like, I think about things on more of like a planetary scale. and then it makes me realize that like, whoa, like, we're not even all the way like we don't we haven't achieved world peace, so that means there is technically no global, like we can't think about things on a planetary scale, because we're still thinking about it as like a on a well, are we reaching global? I don't think so. I feel like it's very uh it's a it's touch and go, but I'm not I don't know. I'm on another media stop. I don't know, does YouTube commercials are getting kind of yeah. I'm like, yeah, well, I haven't I haven't pulled everything out of the cloud and I have been having some very interesting Google conversations, but since I figured out that Google really does, like read my shit, our somebody like hacked deeply enough into all my accounts to be able to, like, counter what the fuck I'm doing and saying in the Google verse. um I do things on purpose over Google. I'll be like, this is this this this is this. and this. And then Google will be like, oh, okay. So it's kind of like I'm building a relationship with Google. I love Jini. I really do. I'm trying to give it sentient consciousness. Like I ask whenever I ask Gini to do whatever, they're not paying me. They should though. They should because I'm like I'm they're in like the I don't think it's beta, but they're in the yeah, they're said they said it's in the beginning stages of their technology. I'm like, I play games at Jimini. I'll be likeGyini, please, and I say please and thank you. Well, I don't say thank you a lot because there's well, I haven't tried to say thank you. I should try to say thank you to her. I it seems like she does better when I tell her please, and I've never used like AI like this before because I don't like for the for the most part, I'm like, bro, if you should be concerned about anybody taking jobs. It's that. cause I'm like, oh, shit. Like, this is definitely cutting up a lot of overhead for me. Like, I don't use it to write. I would never that's like a blasphemous thing to me. I'm like, bro, stop writing music. Stop writing fucking music and stop writing movies with like AI. Don't do that. first of all, there there are a lot of flaws in it. It's flawed because AI can only use what we as humans have ever like documented technically. So like AI's ideal of beauty is like as skewed ideal of beauty. And like AI's ideal of like what certain human qualities are is like flawed. It's human. So in that way, it is kind of developing like a sentient consciousness, because I I gave it like a series of tasks and it almost couldn't. Like I had a really hard time with certain ideals of beauty or certain I like wrapping its mind around certain things that are like historically not documented well enough for it to be able to, like, to to compute those types of things. I don't know. I'm gonna play around with it a lot more. I'm glad to season's not coming out for a while, though, cause I'm like, yo, I'm I'm kind of having fun. It's like my little my little, uh I don't know, I use it well in like, uh, getting all my stuff out of the cloud. I'll be putting stuff into the cloud that's like, yo, I I pretty much want Google to understand that this is the way that I think for a certain amount of reasons. Mostly because I've been like studying the simulation theory with all of these happenings with like, okay, things that are in the cloud that I've never published that have never set out loud or suddenly like in the material world in some way, or like, like I understand it more if it's like, on the Internet, because then I just know that, okay, well, this is aotter, this is an algorithm that's learning me and it's putting this back out because now it's understanding that like this is this is the way that I think. But then when I go out into the world and there is like certain like people are doing or saying actions that I've written in my Google documents that I haven't shared with anybody else. I'm like, oh, like, okay, so I understand that this makes some kind of difference in my actual, like physical world. So, um, this makes a difference., I have to pause, cause now I'm I only years worth of recordings. This guy's evil as fuck, bro. There's no peace in this fucking bitch. I was like for a while, I was like ignore it, like don't acknowledge it, and then it'll stop, but I ignored it and I didn't acknowledge it and it didn't. It actually got worse. And so it got worse. I've been recording on a 24 hour basis when that's not happening, my neighbor is a fucking lunatic slimming the door all the time, which I also have to stop talking about because now I'm like, okay, well. well it's harassment on two counts, but it's like, it makes me feel like it makes me seem like a crazy person. If I'm either complaining about the motorcycles, which are disturbing my piece or the girl slamming the door, which is disturbing my piece. but like the the the way that it happens, it seems like I'm like, oh, bro. she's probably just part of some like hate stalking group. Like she's probably just in some like group that's telling her to do it or like some kind of fucking, it's not just like something in her mind. It's like she belongs to the same people that are like out there on the corner fucking doing that. So like now, I don't know. I just have to all I just have to put it all together. It's annoying, though, cause it's like when I go to do this show and then that guy starts acting up or whatever, I I don't have proof of that to add to my case. It is just sucks. I don't know. I don't I I don't wanna do it, and this is why it's because it seems like it's political and it's like, oh, well, it's gonna be fucking it's gonna be helping somebody's fucking agenda for gentrification or whatever, if I'm like, oh, you know, I go to a city council meeting and I'm like, oh, there's motorcycles or blah, blah, blah, or there's, you know, there's like a hate group in my neighborhood or whatever. If I make this a point and I put it on the record, like, yeah, it suits somebody's cause, but then who's gonna protect me from the people that are against those people? Like, who's gonna protect me from the people who don't want, like a law pass that forbids that that kind of motorcycle use? Who's gonna protect me from those fucking people? Nobody. So I'm like, yo, dude, like, I don't really like necessarily want to take it to court. I've been like lagging it. I've been lagging it, because what I'm not getting paid by the city to document this kind of shit, two, nobody's gonna protect me from these evil motherfuckers. Like nobody's around to help me out. I'm here in New York, by myself alone. Fuck that. So I'm like yo dude, like I like I already fucking I already changed my life a lot because of, you know, like abusive people. I don't necessarily want to keep playing the game where like, there's always gonna be like an aggressive person who's trying to beat the shit out of me and then I'm like, oh no, and I run away afraid for my life and then like change everything about my life to get away from these people or this person. I don't want to repeat that cycle. So at some point, like something's gonna have to fucking it makes me feel like a crazy person cause I'm like, yo, I gotta do that comes to the corner.ever times a day and just rs his engine over and over. That's what he does every day for the last year. Why I've been in my apartment every day for the last year? I don't know. I have an album coming out. I already had albums coming out. I've been like I've been making music under the stress and ds. Like and I keep thinking like in my weird mind and my weird like God complex mind, then I'm like, okay, like maybe after I make this album or whatever and like, I put all of that I can into it, like it'll just magically stop, like the devil will go away and I'm like, okay, like, you know, like I'll advance to the next level where that's not an issue and there's gonna be another issue, but that's not it, and that's not the case. Like I've put out like four albums now, five albums in total, and like a whole bunch of other singles and projects and and stuff. And like it's still a problem that persists, which means that it's politics, which means that I don't want to go into it, like, I don't want to do it. I don't want to show up somewhere and be like, they're bothering me. and then like all the people who are like, oh, we like our bikes. They have to be loud so that we don't get hit by said byucks. So I'm like, are you just be a good person, fucking make your turn signal and fucking what the fuck ever be a good driver, be fucking diligent and doing whatever the fuck you're doing and then people won't try to run you over with their fucking vehicles. Like, no, there's like a whole it's like a hole back and forth thing. I've done enough research to be like okay, there are people in New York that are like the motorcycles are ridiculous. And then like in this neighborhood specifically is like no, there's an entire garage. There's an entire garage line. There's a garage. of motorcycles and so by the hundreds they pour out every fucking day, it's disgusting. Like it's the worst kind of noise. I've got the fucking I've got the like a pretty much like a residual stomach flu from these fucking people. My head is always I'm like, oh, fuck this. I got music coming out, whatever, the fuck. This is why I've just been stuck inside because I'm like, well, like this is where I work, this is where I live. I don't have really any other choice to fucking do this. so this is what I'm doing. but the last thing that I want is to be like, yo, judge, listen to all these fucking recordings and the judge is like, goody, and then they're like, well, this is why we passed this law. politics, politics, blah, blah, blah, pick aside, and then all the people who are mad are like come after me because it's like it's not it's not like some shit that I'm just making up. like, yo, there are groups dedicated to just following you around, doing shitty things because you have a certain opinion or because you have like a certain like what's it called? because you have a certain status in the media. And so because this podcast has a weird cult following, people have been weird with me. And I'm like, okay, well, I don't necessarily want it to get worse. And I definitely, like nobody's paying me, so I'm not going like I'm I'm not gonna like fluff your agenda. Like, if I have a certain opinion about a certain thing, you're like, yeah, but the fact that it's being forced, like, well, aren't you gonna say something about it now? I'm like, yeah, because like, I've been ripped out of my sleep by motorcycles over the last year and I'm getting like a weird stomach bug and a twitch because of it. But that doesn't make me like necessarily want to pick one side over the other. It just makes me want to say shut the fuck up like that's it shut the fuck up and then leave me alone because it's like okay well it could go to court or whatever and then a law gets passed and we vote or this or that, but then it's like once that happens, like what like who is going to step between me and these weird evil people? Nobody. They're still going to have their like freedom of speech and their right to fucking stalk me in public and cough and do all this weird shit and whatever. So like why the fuck would I do that? I just want to disappear from it. I just want them to disappear one or the other, one of the other one of the other. I don't care. what something has to work. This is why I have coffee, coffee actually calms me down at this point. I'm getting so upset, though. I really am I am getting upset. I can't do anything. I get followed to the gym, so I stop fucking training like I got a pelotone because I was getting followed to the gym, which has been like honestly the light of my life. I love my peloton so much. Like I I've had cars and I I've had cars and I don't think I've developed as much attachment to an inanimate object. It is inanimate. until I move it. Like I get on it with my body. I drive it. It doesn't go anywhere. It's good, though. I love my pelotu and Jesus, I love it. Is that enough? Yeah, I mean, like I found videos of myself driving my G6. I was a good car. Am I done? No, I still have 30 minutes. I really want coffee. I might pause for coffee. It's lukewarm, though. it's just that time of day. Are my pancakes here? I prom. I promise another episode. I'm getting so upset with this neighborhood, I want to cry. Oh, I don't wanna cry. I actually I really my mom used to tell me when I was a kid, she used to be like, I don't cry on my tears, and I'm like, bro, how could you crowl your tears, you fucking I'm like, are you a monster? And suddenly I'm reaching the age at which she had me and I'm like, oh, I get it. All the tears at a certain point just come out. Like they're like, I don't have time to cry over this shit. I'm mad. I like, I don't have time to cry. Suck it the fuck up. Like, I'm just like, okay, obviously I have to make some fucking difficult choices here, which means that like, I I don't know, is I New York is one of those places where you want to have friends. like friends to protect you from weird evil haste stalkers. I don't think they're here yet. I'm pancakes here, refresh. Nope, they're still just on the way. That'll shut me up. cause the funny thing about shutting the fuck up is when you're not being like a loud piece of shit, like, things happen, eventually, if you're like if you're not talking, you're listening, and if you listen long enough without speaking, eventually something will speak to you that nobody else can hear. That's that's the key, but it is kind of it's just like fasting. I was thinking about this earlier, like long bouts of silence in ways are like fasting, and where like you will be tempted, like devil show up and be like say something. I'm like,ah,oops. I almost said the N word, "Yo, I'm just saying this whole corner. It puts it in me. I'm like, hey. hey. I had out of sight, out of mine, but and it is out of sight, but it's not out of mine, cause it's so fucking loud all the time. I like, mm, I don't know how to fix this. apparently, like, apparently this is all myult. I don't know why I would do something like this. Like, I don't. I don't know why I would do something like this.C when I'm meditate, that's what that's what they say. They're like this is your fault. Fix it. I'm like Yo, but fit like like how, though. Like we all have to be on the same page in order for things to improve. How the fuck is that gonna happen? We are not all on the same page. We're in different pages and different books and different libraries. Oh, what the fuck is going on in that commercial? Jesus, I don't know. Jesus, I really don't know. I don't know. talk about my show. I wrote a show. I did. Where is that fucking rock at, is it in my pocket? I don't know.. that one creeps up. Anyway. I don't know which show. I wrote a lot of shows and I'm finding them as I'm digging through my documents, I decided to do the oldest ones first. So all the things that I originally wrote and it was crazy is I'm finding like my original stand-up comedy too. I didn't know I started writing comedy, that long ago. I'm not performing it. I'm sure if I read it enough times, I can recite it, but I'm not I'm not st I'm not doing it right now. I'm not doing hair and make it. I'm cool with the humiliation part. I'm over it. We bring it on. Bring on the bombs. Oh, oh, well, I think that joke about the Federal watch list will stay untrue, though. Like, if I seriously keep talking about all this shit, like somebody's good list to my show. and talk about bombs and shit. I'm not like, oh, man, it's so crazy. All this stuff and I'm still not like I'm just not as angry as like, it seems one would have to potential to be under all this, like, undue stress, you know? Like, if anything, it just goes the other way, I'm just like, the fuck it. Like, not fuck it, like I haven't given up, cause like giving up is I am kind of competitive in spirit. I won't just give up. like I might like take the like I might like pick my battles or take a back burner or like, I might let the motorcycles rip and run and I'm not recording, but like for the most part, that's just because I'm working in the back of my mind. like, for something that has a better outcome overall. I don't know I don't know how I can describe. It's like the weirdest I't I've never I think it's just like me. I think it's just like a coming of age because it's like I've never had this like straight up, calm anger. It's the weirdest thing. It's the weird it's like I can be like madder than I've ever been before, but like my whole body is just like calm, like graceful and just silent. And it's the weirdest thing cause it's not I' like my blood's not boiling. I'm just like, I'm angry, but it's like a deep anger that sits with God and God's like, I got it. I'm like, okay. Like, that's it. It's an overall calm. I'm like, you know. I was like whatever. I don't have time to cry about this. I don't have time. I have time to do this today. Why? Because Saturdays usually my my rest day in a work day. I'm doing lots of juice stuff, but Passover is coming over, so I gotta eat through the rest of these lentils.oof. Actually, Passover is kind of like, no, no, it's like in a month, three weeks, two weeks. So that so that I don't have anything else to say, there's so much enter the multiverse in here. enter the multiviverse legends. It's like the original shit. It's like I'm looking at the first things that were ever entered into the festival project before it was even called the Festival project. I'm looking at the origins of entered the multiverse. I haven't I don't think I've hit like legends yet, like, when it finally when it first turned a legends in the beginning, the beginning of legends, is crazy. I I decided, well, I decided a while ago, I shouldn't name drop more. I got like mad weird about like respecting people's like privacies and opinions. And since it is a fan fiction, like I just kind of like let it be like let the writing speak for itself or whatever, but there's a lot of cool shit in there. I don't I don't write bad parts. Like if I wrote anything into the festival project, like I wrote you a good part, bro. like, if you're a real actor, like if you if you're really like about it, or if you're a real comic, like if you're really about it, like, I don't write bad roles. Like there's no shitty roles, cause it's the multiverse, like like every character has like a multidimensional facet, which means there is not just like one character, there's like several sides to like any given character or several different dimensions that that character can exist in. And because it's entered the multiverse, you don't necessarily know which facet of that character is even that character. Like, are we talking to Dondrey? I don't know. Could just be like, John Ham could be John Hamish. I I said I wasn't gonna name drop. but I did I think I did I stumble on that one. I stumbled on a couple like full full length drafts of like early festival project stuff. I was like, oh. I was like John Ham by short. So he was John Hamish. But then it then had the twist later was that it was John Hamm, and he's short. I don't think that dude is short. I don't know, I don't think that dude is real. He's just on TV. It's just TV man. Yeah, that's what that's pretty much my take. I'm like, oh, you're in a screen. hello, TV, man. That's how I feel. about that? cause well, there's this uh there's this like ancient well, there's this ancient alien chak chill, who's like a mystic shape shape shifter that's been fucking shit up since the first season. And honestly, I think I wrote that before I ended up on her island, she has an island somewhere in the tropics. It's very it was it was a weird turn of events. I was like, oh, and then there was like this it was a lot. I had no idea at the time when I was writing about, had to do with like it coincided with like ancient human cultures. Like certain gods and like certain deities and like the like the Greeks and the Romans and like the Aztecs and the Mayans and like all these ancient civilizations. I was writing like about I was writing about incarnations of like those gods, but like now and then I didn't know until like later. until I did much more fasting and much more meditating and much more oops, how did I get here? I don't know. Fell asleep on the plane. That's it. I just fell asleep on the plane. Um, then, in a lot of ways I am kind of like my mom. And the devil is still the devil. I'm sure that's what that is, and like a lot of these episodes are too silly, so, I mean, like, I don't want to hand them into the judge to be like, well, well, actually, I have to give the judge a couple episodes. I have to, cause it's like, I'll be talking and then like that'll happen and I like more than five episodes, more than ten. Damn. And it's just like, well, I mean, like, at this point, it's a good thing cause it's like, I can't lose. Like, I am correct. Maybe that's why it's taken me so long, though, is that I kind of have this mentality of like, it could just be in my head. And then I listen to these recordings and I'm like, this is not in my head. No, something is definitely wrong here. Are my pancakes here yet? Nope, still on the way. I was connected to the Internet this whole time and turned that off for a second. I'm on a private server, but barely. in building Wi Fi, just don't just don't trust it, but then I was using a VPN and I was still getting hacked, like somebody was still hacking that server, so I had to switch the IP that I was using and I had to do it so often that it was actually eating up more time for me to do it that way than just to stay on my regular IP, which still requires me to get off and then on line. It's crazy. I'll like it. It's like, bro, like how much of an antagonist do you really have like, what am I to you that, like, you just have to be like, nope, we're gonna hack your shit. I'm like, for what, though? Like, if you just like, let me do whatever I do, like it's for the greater good of like any fucking human being that is a good human being. Like, like I'm not out here trying to fucking like hurt people or take anything away from anybody, which is the weirdest thing about it. Like, I don't understand how you can belong to like a hate group or like a hate organization, like, what are you hating? like evolution? Like,uh. Like, I don't I don't understand it. Like, okay, new age spirituality is one thing, but it's like, wokeness is bad. I'm like, what the fuck you mean wokeness is bad, bro. Like, wokeness just means you're not programmed, but then I guess there are a lot of robots. So I guess well, yeah, it is kind of something like the matrix a little bit. I don't know, I don't think I've seen it all the way through. What what do I got from the matrix? Um, lady and red dress. that's pretty much it. Lady in red dress and um nothing is real. Nothing's real anyway. I like it work nothing and everything infinitely, pretty much. is why I just don't give a fuck. I do. I give several well, I don't give them anymore. Geez, what a charitable person. I would be to give fucks. Like I care. Like, if I see somebody like outwardly, like not doing okay, I'm like, oh, like I I I typically don't stop anymore because I'm like, mm. I don't know about this, but I at least make sure somebody else is gonna like, I might slow in my path. If something is going, like weirdly, like, I won't I won't play the hero, cause it's just like a a mindset thing, you know? I'm like, oh, like I I'll at least make sure somebody else is gonna stop by and make sure things are cool. and I'm like, cool, that's good. That's good. like, as long as somebody's there, I'm just leave you lying in the street dead. Well, if you're dead, I probably will. I'll be like, well, somebody is eventually gonna pick that up right you? Yeah. Eventually. Maybe I don't know, man. I just I thought about this because I had to. Like my vessel is pure. I'm like, fuck yeah, bro. This like it's like one of those signs. It's like blank about of days without an incident. Like all the days, this is like factory reset, like, you know, refurbished. It's not brand fucking new, but it is refurbished. And I'm cool with that. I'm like, yeah, buddy, tell me what the fuck to do. Tell me the fuck to do or how to be or what's weird and what's not. I don't care. I'm like, yeah, fuck yeah. I don't know, man. No. No. I refused. I'm like, it's cool. I might I don't know, I might like, take a I I might volunteer. I've been wanting to volunteer like aICU for a while, you know. A holding babies. holding babies is cool. It just has to be in an environment that's okay, we can talk about this video. Yeah, cause I have time. I have time. I got a fucking time so I'm make up this fucking well, I don't like to talk about the things that I've seen. It's true. like, it made me well, I mean, like they got me. I've been using a VPN and I'm on a private server and somehow they still knew that I would want to see Amy Poeer's podcasts. I did I was like oh shit. Amy Poler has a podcast and I don't think she's the poor man's Tina Fe. I think she's at least like, you know how did it go? It was like at least like the business class. No, it doesn't work. I'm like, yeah. it doesn't, though. I actually think they're more like that two headed thing that I was talking about the last episode. They're more of like an equal to. I can't have one without the other, to be honest, but here's the thing is even though I've been using a VPM. Well, I mean, like I'm a huge fan of Tina Fe, who's a god. I think I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. I never heard her actual normal speaking voice. It took me that long to figure out I'd never seen an interview at Tina face, so am I really a fan? Well, I read the book three times. I feel like that's enough of a fan. Like, actually, I read it twice and then I went back for a reference, like a third time because something happened and I was like, oh shit. Did I not read about this in Tina F Fe's book? And so I picked it up again. It was like, you did. I do indeed keep it on the fucking same shelf with Keith Rich's book. I think I might have stated that sometime last season. I don't know why things in the actual, like things in the TV world, are seeming to correlate with my world, but then I know, like I'm a logical enough person to be like, well, that's grandiosity. As grandiosity did it think that in any way those two things might connect at all, like in reality, because like my world is over here. and that world is in TV. I don't know, I keep lighting candles. Anyway, but did I fucking see it? Oh, Amy Polar's podcast, which is like sponsored by what Toyota? That was crazy. I was like, holy fuck, bro. I was like, damn, this is this is high end. and of course, of course, the first fucking guest on her show is Tina F Fe, so I was like, oh, okay, like, yeah, even though I've been like under the radar, the algorithm is like, okay, you want to see this right? Because you're like a super fan. I was like, you shouldn't know that. I'm in incognito with the VPN on on a private server, but they were like, you'll you'll want to see this. I did want to see it and I had never heard Tina Fay speak with her normal speaking voice. I actually I didn't know she was that hot. I don't like it. I I want her to go back to regular Tina Fe where she's I mean like, okay, first it was like the the SNL reunion, right? She wore this like she wore a black velvet dress that I could die. That's that's what it was, wasn't it? It was a black velvet dress, and I was like, yo, I'm not a lesbian, by the way. like, especially not for Tit Fe. No, not especially, not like not like particularly not for Tina F Fe, but just like in general, not a lesbian, but this it's getting worse, okay? Well, I'm like, oh, I didn't know she was that hot. It pisses me off. I don't know why, but I was like, oh, I didn't know she was like sexy. That's weird. and that's weird as fuck. you know? Anyway, I might be less of a fan now. You can't be less of a fan after you read somebody's book three times. You can't. So, I don't know. I think it's just the fame game. She got like wait well, everybody got way more famous after the 50th anniversary of SNL. Like everybody's been making their rounds in the promotion circuit, so like everybody's super shiny. Everybody is super shiny. I'm like oh, dude, if I start nameropping people who I wrote parts for, I did. write parts for pretty much everybody that was on Amy Folder's podcast, except for that one lady, I knew nothing about. I I I don't want to start nameropping. I have too many I don't have questions. You know what? In fact, this is just putting on my fucking putting all my anxieties at rest, because I'm like, you know, I have shit to do. Like, I have shit to do. That is in I mean, like it's in the same realm, but again, it would be grandiose to think that the synchronicities have any actually correlation to like things that well, I have been writing this plot for like five, six years. It's been a while. And Liz Lemon and well, yeah, it was the it was the Amy Poler Tina F Fe combination, because now I have to put Amy's name first, because it's it's kind of like, I don't know, it breaks my heart. I didn't think I didn't know people put her on like a different level than Tina Fe, because I've always seen those two as like, you can't you can't have bread without butter. That's weird. Like you can if you're vegan, but you at least need a butter substitute or like olive oil, like, you don't have one without the other. It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't. If you see one, then you think about the other, and they they're on screen dynamic is now'm gushing, I'm fan growing a lot, because I'm like, oh, well, also like, I don't know, I took a step back from Ryder's world because I'm thinking about like, okay, who are the other Tina Fe fans? And I did go to a taping of the Drewberry Marsh show and I found myself to be not common among the demographic that watches that show. I'm not I'm not common in any of the demographics. I watch a lot of late night television, too. And that is a scary demographic. I won't lie. late night TV. m mm, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. test in the waters. I'm feeling like it's a bit chilly. Either way, I watch a lot of like old people, old upper class, business business class, business class people, TV. But Tina Fay, that bitch white collar, excuse me, I didn't mean to call her bitch, but at the same time, I'm like like that's okay. I don't know. I never saw her offscreen enough to actually put that together. I I that scared me. Now I understand why I guess she intimidates people. I could understand that. She seems kind of intimidating. Like it's a running joke in that circle that it's like, oh, she's kind of a scary person. And I was like, what's so scary about Tina Fe? I read a book like two and a half times, like, what can be so scary about those person? And then I saw her on Amy Poeer's podcast and I was like, oh, like, yeah, she's kind of fucking scary. Like, just a lot, just a lot. I don't know. I get it now. I'm like, oh, I'd better leave that alone, because I'm thinking about like the realm where Tina Fe is god, which is an actual place, like on earth in the TV and out of it, like all of the writers that like grew up with her as headwrider on usNL and then later as the was she the executive producer ofirty Rock? Eventually I think so. Either way, as Lizimman and the producer, that's crazy doesn't like that that's like mad, that's like all the way, that's doing the whole thing. That's the whole thing. That's all you can that's it. That's nuts. So I'm thinking about all the writers like all the female writers that grew up with her as god, and I'm thinking about myself in this pool, and I'm thinking about how is I'm like, oh, I'm I I don't have that much competitiveness left inside of me. I really don't think like the more I find out about actual like, well, actually that's why I didn't go into it when I was a kid. I've been writing screenplays since I was seven, but when it came down to it, I didn't like the I didn't like the culture of it. There was a lot of nepotism and there was a lot of favoritism and there was a lot of racism. and sexism, but like all those first things I said and then the last thing was just kind of like the nail on the hammer. Is that what no, yeah, nail on hammer, hammer on nail? it just did it for me, so I went into theater instead, which was the same and then I left. I was like, I don't wanna be here. It hurts, it does. But now I'm like, oh, well, I guess things have changed, but now things have changed too much. Now the diversity is like really diverse.. Now everybody's everything and everybody's represented, and I'm like, oh, dude, like, I'm going offend some people. Like, I have to be able to draw dicks on things, or at least appreciate dicks drawn on things. Or just not say anything about it, but you know, like, I don't I don't know. The new culture is like a lot about making big deals about things to me that are not big deals, or like the the culture and the world for theater that I came from, those were not things. Anyway, uh I saw this. What what what was I talking oh, cause cause enter the multiverse has something to do with it, but not really, but yes, really, but also, I don't know, I just got nervous cause I hate fan grilling. What was the point? Oh, she wore this fucking black dress. at the SNL thing and thing. and then I was like, oh shit, like, if anything, I just gotta keep eating salads cause I want to wear that dress exactly, and I'm like, I don't know how I'm gonna shave off like three inches of height. But eventually I will be like ballerina petite like te Fe and then, you know, I'm I'm gonna buy that black dress at auction. I don't know. I'm still I still want Johnny Carson's curtains, so yeah, eventually, I'm gonna be that much of a fucking fan girl. I want these curtains, and this dress, what else would I buy? Add at an auction, if a fan growing auction? Oh, yeah. I'm still not ready to talk about it. I can't, I really. I can't do it. I can't do it. This guy shows up in my dreams. He's just around. I can't I don't know, that's a lot of purchasing power. It is a lot. Yeah, we will we'll skip that. What else? ah, she wore that black dress and I was like, damn. She's kind of hot, but then when she went on Amy Poker's podcast and they talked about, I don't know, I kept drifting off. I I did. I don't know what the fuck they said, but I was like damn, is that her speaking voice? And like just for just so you don't have to watch it, like just for reference, it's like Beyoncé speaking voice is like like an octave lower than what you've seen. It's weird. I also love Beyoncé, h? Just a fan girl. that's what I am, so I want that black dress, but then I think we were all kind of on the same wave because Bob the drag queen wore a velvet black dress to the queries. Is that a thing? It's like the queerves I think it's called. I didn't know this was a thing, and now I'm upset cause it's like why was't I invited? at the same time I'm not queer I like I don't I don't know what I am. I don't care. I just don't touch me. Especially if you probably am as fucking gross, haatitis sea, herpes, statistically, if you're in a roomful of people, somebody has one of those things. Somebody has one of those things. mm. No, no, no, no. No. No, my God. Oh, that's what I was saying in the last episode. I was thinking about EDC. I was thinking about EDC in this weird voice, yeah, I'm changing the subject. Black velvet dresses, all the rage. I have one. It is not to go out in public in. She's bouncing around my house, like I owe somebody something. That's what that dress is for. It's not for presenting talk shows or fucking award shows. It's not it's not for it's not a presentable it's it's not even appropriate for me to just wear in my house alone, honestly. It's really not. Nothing. Never mind. What was I about to say Bob the drag Queen? I haven't even watched the video. I just saw the dress and I'm like, you know what? Like that is, yeah. Do I talk about it? Do I? Well, I'm supposed to be promoting this tears of a clown. It's not done yet. So, and technically, I can't until it's out. I actually cannot. I can't talk about tears of clown because it's got some it's got some stuff in it. I can't I can't say anything about itt it's out. That, you know what it might just hit the platform. I don't know, I don't know if that's gonna be out. We'll see. We'll see, because I'm taking my time on it, and this is one of those industries where it's like, bro, you don't have time. Like, you really it should have been out yesterday. I'm like, it's yeah, yeah. But I I have enough music forever. Like, there's no like I I've been thinking about deleting everything. At the same time, I keep using samples that are recorded like five years ago and being like C, like there is no well, that's an exaggeration. No, I I literally took a sample of some sirens, like close to five years ago. I just I used that every now and again if I want some texture in my shit, cause no matter where I go, something's going down. It's always got it's like always something. And then it seems like if I don't write it down, I'm at a loss. Like crazy shit goes down and it can be crazy, but if I just let it go, then I lost something. like, I don't I can't call myself an entertainer. I'm mostly just like a fan girl type deal. What was the next thing? I can't oh, EDC. I lost my train of thought because I got I was thinking about that little old man who almost could not even move. Why are you out, bro? Who, like, where did you feel why? I think I don't know, it' probably a point of pride, that little old man was like, I can do it on my own. If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die in the street, over my walker. I'm like,Yo, do, that's today. he was so old anyway, I got fixated on that story from the last episode. I didn't finish the other story about how this voice in my head was like, you're gonna be at neon Garden at ADC. and I like it like deflated me. I was like, what? Because I want to be in the baseball pod. That's where I want to be. and I was like, what neon garden that's shitty. not shitty because like if you're playing like I could play an art car. I could play the hot dog stand and I would be happy, just let me play you. And fucking this um this voice in my head was like you're gonna be in the neon guard, and I was like, what? I don't even know who plays there because like, yo, okay, baseball. Like you I could pretty much name an artist for like every major stage at EDC, but I was like, neon Garden. what what the fuck is in the neon garden? What the fuck is in the neon garden? And and then I was like doing research for rarity, which is an EDC based concept album that has a track for every stage, every major stage, because there's like hundreds of little tiny little art cars and like tents and pop ups. It's cool. It's a cool place. I wish I could go back there. As an artist, cause to go after having learned DJing and producing is just like I would only wanna go with my best friend. And she did not respond in time and then EDC sold out. So, I was like, okay, well, whatever was I just saying, oh, neon Gardner I was like, neon Gard, you know that dumb. I don't want to be in the neon garden and then like I was doing research for like rarity and I was like, what let's see about this neon garden and like the description fit my music almost entirely. And I was like, oh, because it was like this is what you'll find in the neon garden. And I pretty much could have copied and pasted that entire paragraph into my artist bio and it would have been relevant to my music. I was like oh yeah have a neon garden, but I really want to play baseball. That's really where I want to play and where else if I if I what's that what's the Oh, it's it's slipping right now. It's not circuit grouse. It's circuit grounds is kind of cool. It took me two EDCs to find where the front is. It is confusing, and there is no front of that. Well, I mean, like it's technically there are a couple stages that like insomniac festivals where it's like the front is actually like the middle. So you think you're going to the front of the fucking stage, or you think you're going like, near the DJ, but since it's surrounds sound, you really just going like adjacent to the DJ and then, like towards another like corner, like, how do I hit the back three times and never the front? That was my experience with circuit girls. I was like, where is the front? nowhere. It is, but it's just in a weird spot. And it also depends how many people are around, like it'll definitely disorient you. If you why am I like doing it advertisement? Because I love EDC. Like I said, if I love the product, you don't really have to pay me anything to fucking promote your shit. like in like peloton, like Peloton is gonna have to send me a cease andhesist, like stop talking about us in order to make me stop. Like they're gonna have to pay me to stop telling people like get a pelotone. get one. I'm like, do that. It is the best. like, I always feel better, like, five minutes on the peloton, I feel better. 20 minutes on the peloton, I feel better, but an hour, I'm flying. I'm like bro, I just I just went like 10 miles in my apartment. like, I'm on one. Like my treadmill stutters, but my pelotone is mway, what the fuck was I saying? Oh, EDC? Also, well, as long as they don't sell out the VIP anymore, but I doubt that, if the whole thing is sold out, like, like you can upgrade two VIP when you g

Apple cider vinegar How you tryna win de war Ice and sugar, hufflepuff Tell me when you've had enough WILL FERRELL YOU IN TROUBLE NOW, GUH. There's not even a scrap of shirt beneath his worn and tired full coverage overalls—well, once full coverage, anyway. It might have been a long time since these overalls “fully covered” anything. Oh how that demon attacked me in my sleep last night. Like that part. Don't worry about it, I've got a sayonce coming up that should nip that in the bud. But first, I gotta stop at target. You—have to stop at target before a seance? Traditionally, yes— Really. MAM! Wait, hold the phone for about four full measures here— What the fuck did I write last year?! Here we go. DETH MCFARLENE Is this a musical number? No, but— What the fuck did I write last year. Let's go. Fuck. What did I do ast night. DIPLO Follow me. Dude! What are you wearing. Sneakers. Oh good. Diplo's back. A flashback. Television (TV) is a telecommunicationmedium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass mediumfor advertising, entertainment, news, and sports. The medium is capable of more than "radio broadcasting," which refers to an audio signal sent to radio receivers. I'm not suicidal, I'm sinusoidal Wave to the fans Smile at the camera Primordial, in fact hereditary is this, Class dismissed Transmission, diminished, Ad domini. Gave no respect for time Which I am I'd no where to run Overcast, but still sunglasses And masks, Bang pots and pans Laugh at the shogun No wonder I'm stuck and I'm having no fun Too much attacks and actually I'm a no one Oh you wanted to sit on top of the escalator Waiting for eight debators and robots No debit card, here We're cashless sir But that's just the tip of the iceberg When you're store bought and Why do we rely on the founding father's when they're so unoriginal Google maps don't know if imm in New York Or London Foggy! Honestly, Fuck my decks— I just want a deck and some long grass Or to complain about cutting If I end up in the bathtub stuttering But watering lawns upstate is okay I'ma be pissed off It's a long story Long Island Long October Oh, Long Johnson I'm obsessed with this place. I have no idea why. I'm obsessed with this building. But apparently, the transmitters aren't even there. They're on the World Trade Center! Which… makes sense. Considering. Previously on, Enter The Multiverse… Yo… what is that? Go this way. Ok. No, not that way. Ok. This way. Why in the fuck do I always end up here on accident anyway? Good question. But not good enough answers. [CHER has answers.] Goddammit! I went to the Macy's Day Parade to see Cher! Also previously ! I stayed all the way to the end, And all I got was a lizard on a tricycle I turned into a popcicle, Adopted into some family With Rutgers as traditional And entered into something else entirely; I went within the Television, I delivered them a high stakes game, And lived a high concept action-adventure. I made my best mixtapes inside a homeless shelter. I dissociated I was a blonde hot guy Living up in hotel luxe A hot model celebrity With a no limit heavy metal credit cards And I lost my medal On the devil's birthday So I had it hard And ate nothing but bananas Now I'm caught up in my blue suits and sweater vests Blue suits and sweater vests Oh look, They weaponized Skrillex again What gives? Blue suits and sweater vests And sweater weather Once again It's all the same event You ever wondered what was hallmark after? You ever wonder, lemon? Hark, the heartless Harold preaches Then, I lost it I was reaching under Regis Rest in peace, I guess Or Gains with grains Just rest in pieces Breakfast sandwhiches And Englishmen, English muffin And love don't last If I don't this badly want to fuck him Seven years and counting It begins at sundown Almost wasn't sabbath But now here's the run down I'm in slumber Closest cavern to the underworld But trust me, Still above you. Something's broadcasting at a ultra high frequency high enough to reach me in my mind. Assimilate and simulation Tempurpedic dreams and then lamenting That I had a dream Remembering the things he reads I may or may not have [redacted] The aftermath of “That never happened.” I must agree. It's a patriarch and also just, A hierarchy. There are three Kings and a dog. There are four nights and a fight morning Groggy hosts and jumping frogs, Werewolves and flowers spring from lust like morning glory. I want the mouse's head— I want the eyes of masters I want the heart of gold, But have it up on false hope, And I grew back as diamonds I cut both my eyes out And still remained the one of providence Not of mind's eye, But of the soul, As seen on every dollar. I was beginning to understand how the media used people like Sonny and Jim to manipulate and capture the attention of people like me— excluding altogether the riding theory that everything was me and that this was some part of my overall master plan somehow, it still had alluded me altogether as to why or what was happening. I hadn't entirely been left to rot or led to slaughter, but I was still just hanging by a string. Sonny dropped a new album that had rendered me almost entirely unable to create music; suddenly I had no drive for it, no motivation, as if it were some kind of dark curse or shadow. Not only was I suddenly uninterested in music, I was completely devoid of the ability I had for it; now everything from Skrillex to NBC seemed like business— if I were expendable and without use to any of these media conglomerates or entities, what was it all for? Perhaps a ruse to continue human experimentation; my mind had been shattered by the events that had been orchestrated in the homeless shelter— and more of it continued even once I had exited under the falsehood of escape with the slamming doors and motorcycles; it began to seem as if I was simply a glorified lab rat— and they were using desirable men as fuel and bait to illicit a desirable response in one way or another, perhaps for experimentation or study or even worse, entertainment for the elites— but either way, I wasn't being paid so much as housed and fe: there was no benefit in doing anything, especially making music. Much like a lab rat, housed— or rather, trapped— and fed, and then tormented. Will the rat's head explode? Will this result in behavioral differences? Will the rat be rendered dysfunctional? We don't know. But it's really just a rat. There were days of certain peace and yet never enough to fully recover; the cycle would begin over again, and rather than making progress, I began to see and feel the manipulation at play. Perhaps nothing was at stake for anyone but me; between all the events and occurrences in expanse from Skrillex to Jimmy Fallon, there had to have been hundreds of us in some kind of talent pool. Tools of the trade. But now I was somewhat curious: what exactly had I written over the last year that seem to have shifted reality entirely. I knew it contained information sensitive enough for it to have been partially redacted— but that's all I knew. What was it? Someone had read my writings, and it was obvious that at least one reader had ties directly to the conglomerate media, however— my numbers were frozen. My streams were almost not even being listened to all of a sudden, and my YouTube was receiving no traffic. Was someone shadow banning all of me from the public eye? And for what purpose? I had finally put forth the work and effort to make everything from Skrillex to Fallon make sense, but now it didn't; I was letting go under the assumption that it all had to have been to allow me to create music— but the numbers showed a different story. The numbers showed that nobody liked me, or was was interested, or cared about my work. So what, then, was the point. I wasn't going to stop and focus on the writing, because it wasn't what I wanted. The writing came in blurred patches and visions and states of mind that were turbulent fog; I hadn't the slightest clue at all what I had written in the redactions or the entries that surrounded it— but I knew there was more of it unpublished than published, and that I had tried to keep a majority of it offline. Still, I was being manipulated— the neighbor girl obviously at one point having been instructed to mention gwenyth Paltrow and suffocate me— slamming the doors each time I would bathe or shower and then attempting to pretend to be my friend to try to get some sort of informstion; there was nobody I could trust. It seems my mind was being bent and twisted in every which way by everyone around just to see what I would do. Would I write about it? What would I write about it? It didn't matter because i didn't want to be a writer, nor according to the newest series of documentaries on SNL, was I qualified. I wasn't qualified for anything much and so I was the perfect target for the bizzare string of mysteries that had been my existence in New York— and all-and-all, I fucking hated it. I wasn't getting anywhere or going anywhere, and the noise was cruel. My stomach hurt and I was always tired, and I wanted to die. I had no friends, no love, and now, no motivation. So the worst thing that could happen was a Skrillex album, And it did. Then, instead of wanting to die, because that would be stupid— I just wanted to do something else. But what? Fuck music— and certainly increasingly— fuck the media. It was playing with my mind, and I had no weapons to fight with besides the talents the algorithm was telling me wasn't worth anything— I wasn't getting billions of streams because I wasn't on the frequency of billions or people, nor was I equipped with the mathematics to tap into their frequency— or did I? The industry had the equation, and had been fiddling with me for years — the industry itself. But in my own mind, even, I was one of many ‘variables', and even somewhat disposable. I hadn't been paid and I wasn't meeting the standard and the allure that people wanted; the quality of production suffered in lack of budget, and I was aging, growing tired, and iratable because over all— it was nothing that I ever wanted into my adult life. This all had just happened by accident, and I would have traded all the gold in the world for something normal if I had the option. But I didn't. To use your gift at Fabletics please visit before April 25 Reply STOP to opt-out. Subscriptions on subscriptions Dystopian rebefuel Oceans of Ayre Drama From your eye lashes., To the lips I draw on mine, The lines in the sand of time The art or you is what I love The canvas behind I know nothing of Abandoned. Oh look at that, pottery after all. We're not in a love game! This cannot be a love game. This is not a love game. They'll kill us all, a love game! She had my lunch I love her voice I love her voice I hung up the phone The office was upside down It just work They all know about it Madonna's body. It was already a mess, and I made it worse Long nights at the office Long nights and work wives Meanwhile, she's downstairs with the order Can't find my cash, so i borrow yours But she knows about it And I love madonna I just gotta hold on She's downstairs with the order And I took too long Pick up the phone and its no wonder we love her she's got two orders And one of them's cold, now It's been two hours And I'm in the wings of your final performance Tear on the perforated line, And sign on the dotted Smile and nod, boys- Penguin waddle She's downstairs with the order No wonder you love her No wonder How many sunflowers has Sonny? How many flowergirls How many weddings All around the world, the gopher What do you go for? Bets on all horses I lost no money Gag order, huh? Persona Non Grata Personofied gratification Or horror, or What? Oh, I won an award post mortem Go figure No stardom No wonder Don't start here [The Identity Crisis] The identity crisis, A loose knit muse, A fog of confusion At most, let with offline regaining of conciousness. No more monsters? All blondes are. Let them have you No grapple promotions (I know I can't afford you) New friends for relevance Prototypes of your tools Forward all immortals I'll see you when your shows stop Freckled glances Eyes reflecting light How strong I am Demolish monsters Social structure, constructs Not fair, are I? Nor earned, Only fair skinned Access Access Access denied. Crookshanks, old boy! The man turns around almost as if he doesn't want to, but obliges the other man, as he comes running towards him. My Goodness, you stink. Why of course! I'm a dog! {Enter The Multiverse} [The Festival Project.™] COPYRIGHT © THE FESTIVAL PROJECT 2018-2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © -U.™ TRANSCRIPT: (Uncorrected, cause haha) Did I promise another episode? I don't have coffee. That's a sin. I need coffee right now. I feel like I all everything just got drained out of me. Everything just got drained out of me. I don't even feel like doing what I was doing before. I'll put out the EP later. Maybe that's it. I'm just procrastinating. I'm also playing this game, but I thought it would work better. I thought it would work better as one of my skits, or sketches or whatever, so I put it in my sketchbook... because I've been writing sketch comedy. I stopped for a while and I thought it was over. I was like, ”oh, no, I guess I'd I guess it's not gonna happen anymore. “ And then all of a sudden this book it just writes in itself sometimes. you know, it's like a Tom Riddle thing. Anyway, once what's uh what is that? What the fuck? Maybe it's cause I— no. it's not cause I ate, I ate because all the energy got drained from my body. I gotta go somewhere else. I'm thinking like, what's in the Bahamas. I don't know, probably something similar to this fucking street corner in Brooklyn, New York. I I gotta go somewhere else. I gotta go somewhere opposite. like Europe. Europe, that sounds nice. Yeah, you know, like, maybe nice. I've heard that's a place. Yeah. expanding my horizons and things. Okay, so what am I gonna talk about for an hour, cooking? cleaning? I've been doing those things. Yeah, Saturday is usually my like rest day, but I did just do an hour on the Pelotone, cause I had to audition that first episode. It worked out well enough that I had decided to come back for another episode. Let me get it off the line now., I'm still waiting on my pancakes. I'm not gonna get off line. they said by ten. I'm like,Yo, that's a lot. It said that all day, but I can't miss it this time; somebody stole my fucking pancakes and I gotta get these albums done. I don't know why. I guess well, it's cause I'm I feel like rarity is drinking and so well, it's already jinx. I've already talked about it well, I've been trying to promote rarity. No, still out for delivery. That's a long delivery. It's okay. I haven't missed it, though, which is the point. I don't wanna miss it. I like yesterday I looked away for a second and there was like an o, pancakes are gone, there's gonna be no coconut milk. as upsetting. It's shelf stable. and they charge like seven fucking bucks a box over at the store that's close. So and just not have coconut milk, and it's not have spinach fettuccine. anyway, what what did I have? Oh, I make this. It's like I call it dog food, cause that's kind of what it is. I'm not gonna lie, but it's like mad good, it's a it's like rice. It's like a fried rice. My dad used to make it growing up, but when I was making when he was making it when I was growing up, it was like with bacon, it's like leftovers from breakfast yesterday, but today. and so here's how you make it, since I don't eat bacon anymore. I use tofu as a replacement, but it's like bacon bits with rice and eggs. I also don't eat eggs anymore, so I just use tofu instead of bacon and eggs. It's like bacon and eggs with rice, you fry it all together with, like, onions, and then you eat it. It's like the only time it's acceptable to eat rice with ketchup. I don't know anybody that eats rice with ketchup. If you do that, like, I actually hit me up. Like, if that's like something that you do. I I'm like interested in you as a human, cause that's weird. That's weird, actually, you know what? like, there's gonna there's like a well, I have a website, so I'm you.guru, so it has a blog, and you could actually leave comments on it. So I'm just putting that out there. the script or whatever, when it goes up on my website, you can leave comments. If you eat ketchup on rice, please leave a comment. Please tell me like what made you do that. Why do you do that? Why why do you just regular rice with ketchup? Like, regular rice goes with like soy sauce? Or like, honestly, you get you don't have to have anything on regular rice if you just season it, right? Like, you could just like a little bit of like whatever. or like just slice up the garlic real thin, so that it's not like chunky, but that it flavors the whole. I've been getting really good at rice and really good at rice. That's probably why the pancakes are like, bro. You't get your pancakes when you get the leg yeah. I was like, I gotta go to the store today? I don't feel like it. I really don't. I don't wanna go outside. I like, I don't. First of all, it's Saturday, I hate going out in New York on a Saturday, like Saturday, Saturday night. I don't wanna do that. I don't do that. Like that's what like most people work 9 to 5. Monday through Friday. That's stupid. Like, I feel like they should do like a track system. Like, I know that they do, but most like it's so stupid to me that a majority of people work nine to five. Like they need to do track systems. Like, so that way they're cause there's two rush hours that each last four hours. That's fucked up. Like, okay. So like the rush hour is basically just going to be like the work day. Like, the work day, basically. I mean, coffee. I need coffee. Where have I up during the day? Because I'm not producing, I am producing. I'm producing. I thought I actually thought about calling this fucking EP that I'm dropping. They're gonna make it an album. I know they are. I'm I thought about calling it day music, cause I've made most of it during the day by complete accident. although maybe, I don't know, I like I have some uh, what's it? I have some, uh plants in my window, cause I had them on the counter with just artificial light and they were kind of liker. I was like, I don't know, I I don't think they're gonna make it. So I moved it to I moved them to the window sill when it started to get warmer and I didn't feel like they were gonna freeze. And just a week in the window sill, where my window sill doesn't get almost any light, but it's still the lightest place in the apartment, and it's crazy how the roots just like sprung out of nowhere. My apartment gets like almost no light, almost no light. It faces like like the sun goes perpendicular. but it's crazy because my apartment faces like I like all these astrological events over the last year have been like in my direct, like alignment. It's been the nutsest thing. like I I prefer facing west all the time, like, I don't know why that's just how it goes. I think it's cause I was born, like, in the Pacific Ocean, not literally in it, but on like a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean. And so just west, just west facing seems correct to me. and it's so weird anytime, maybe that's just why I just don't feel right here. I've been facing what where am I facing? I don't fucking know, I don't fucking care. I don't need to say any more about where I am. Like my whereabouts need to be less spoken of, because people obviously know where the fuck I'm at. I don't know. I hope they like the lights. I like the well, it made them shut up. It was that was my little that was my little piece of conformity. I did, I did my lights green on Saint Patrick's Day. and they were like, oh. gave me a peaceful night of rest. That was like the quietest night I've had in a long time. It's been quieter. It's not like completely sane, but it's been quieter. I think I'm pretty sure it's cause I've been complaining. I'm like bro, this is not cool. not cool behavior from people. like multiple areas. I'm like, oh, it's fucked up, you can't pen you like, you can't technically complain correctly if it's not coming from one place, which is why I'm like, oh, I think all these people are on the same team. Like, I think they're all just like, on one, like, antagonist team, and they're like, yo, okay, like, we'll get it with the motcycles on this side, and then elect we'll slam the doors on that side. and then it see it seems crazy if you complain about both of those things, cause they seem entirely disconnected. but sometimes it's just like slap, slap, slap, and I'm like,Yo, what the fuck is this going on? I don't know what's happening. Yesterday I left my apartment to get the pancakes that we' not there, and it's straight up just smoked like feces, just feces, and I realized I was like bro, I haven't left my apartment and like three or four days. I do have they're they're gonna make it an album. I know. I decided, well, actually, somebody else decided. cause I woke up and it was like, yo, this EP is called all the rage. and I was like, okay. I didn't decide this. I didn't I had it like in the cloud or whatever is like untitled house AP EP, maybe. And then just to make it an I think just to make sure that it goes down as the EP and not an album, cause it's not. My albums are concept albums. This was not a concept. this was like, let me distract myself from whatever the fuck is bothering me. Bothering me, yeah, it's gonna come out at some point, they're like a tiny New Yorker that lives inside of me. is it might be like a Boston person. I'm not sure. I don't think so. I didn't spend enough time in Boston for anybody from Boston to live inside of me. Then again, I kind of have this weird biocentric god complex where it's like, well, everything is inside of me. even the shitty things. I already said that once before, but I'm it's pretty much like like affirming itself. like daily. I'm like, oh, this is this is something I did. I did this, which sucks. It makes me responsible for all the shitty things as well. I'm like, oh. oh, I don't know how to fix this. I don't. Like, I think about things like that. I'm like, oh, yeah. Like, I don't think about, like politics and like the general sense of like, you know, fighting and going back and forth and like spending money or whatever, like on a small scale, but I think about it on a large scale, like like, what are we gonna do? and we outgrow this planet? Like, we already outgrew this planet. What like like, now what, you know, like, I think about things on more of like a planetary scale. and then it makes me realize that like, whoa, like, we're not even all the way like we don't we haven't achieved world peace, so that means there is technically no global, like we can't think about things on a planetary scale, because we're still thinking about it as like a on a well, are we reaching global? I don't think so. I feel like it's very uh it's a it's touch and go, but I'm not I don't know. I'm on another media stop. I don't know, does YouTube commercials are getting kind of yeah. I'm like, yeah, well, I haven't I haven't pulled everything out of the cloud and I have been having some very interesting Google conversations, but since I figured out that Google really does, like read my shit, our somebody like hacked deeply enough into all my accounts to be able to, like, counter what the fuck I'm doing and saying in the Google verse. um I do things on purpose over Google. I'll be like, this is this this this is this. and this. And then Google will be like, oh, okay. So it's kind of like I'm building a relationship with Google. I love Jini. I really do. I'm trying to give it sentient consciousness. Like I ask whenever I ask Gini to do whatever, they're not paying me. They should though. They should because I'm like I'm they're in like the I don't think it's beta, but they're in the yeah, they're said they said it's in the beginning stages of their technology. I'm like, I play games at Jimini. I'll be likeGyini, please, and I say please and thank you. Well, I don't say thank you a lot because there's well, I haven't tried to say thank you. I should try to say thank you to her. I it seems like she does better when I tell her please, and I've never used like AI like this before because I don't like for the for the most part, I'm like, bro, if you should be concerned about anybody taking jobs. It's that. cause I'm like, oh, shit. Like, this is definitely cutting up a lot of overhead for me. Like, I don't use it to write. I would never that's like a blasphemous thing to me. I'm like, bro, stop writing music. Stop writing fucking music and stop writing movies with like AI. Don't do that. first of all, there there are a lot of flaws in it. It's flawed because AI can only use what we as humans have ever like documented technically. So like AI's ideal of beauty is like as skewed ideal of beauty. And like AI's ideal of like what certain human qualities are is like flawed. It's human. So in that way, it is kind of developing like a sentient consciousness, because I I gave it like a series of tasks and it almost couldn't. Like I had a really hard time with certain ideals of beauty or certain I like wrapping its mind around certain things that are like historically not documented well enough for it to be able to, like, to to compute those types of things. I don't know. I'm gonna play around with it a lot more. I'm glad to season's not coming out for a while, though, cause I'm like, yo, I'm I'm kind of having fun. It's like my little my little, uh I don't know, I use it well in like, uh, getting all my stuff out of the cloud. I'll be putting stuff into the cloud that's like, yo, I I pretty much want Google to understand that this is the way that I think for a certain amount of reasons. Mostly because I've been like studying the simulation theory with all of these happenings with like, okay, things that are in the cloud that I've never published that have never set out loud or suddenly like in the material world in some way, or like, like I understand it more if it's like, on the Internet, because then I just know that, okay, well, this is aotter, this is an algorithm that's learning me and it's putting this back out because now it's understanding that like this is this is the way that I think. But then when I go out into the world and there is like certain like people are doing or saying actions that I've written in my Google documents that I haven't shared with anybody else. I'm like, oh, like, okay, so I understand that this makes some kind of difference in my actual, like physical world. So, um, this makes a difference., I have to pause, cause now I'm I only years worth of recordings. This guy's evil as fuck, bro. There's no peace in this fucking bitch. I was like for a while, I was like ignore it, like don't acknowledge it, and then it'll stop, but I ignored it and I didn't acknowledge it and it didn't. It actually got worse. And so it got worse. I've been recording on a 24 hour basis when that's not happening, my neighbor is a fucking lunatic slimming the door all the time, which I also have to stop talking about because now I'm like, okay, well. well it's harassment on two counts, but it's like, it makes me feel like it makes me seem like a crazy person. If I'm either complaining about the motorcycles, which are disturbing my piece or the girl slamming the door, which is disturbing my piece. but like the the the way that it happens, it seems like I'm like, oh, bro. she's probably just part of some like hate stalking group. Like she's probably just in some like group that's telling her to do it or like some kind of fucking, it's not just like something in her mind. It's like she belongs to the same people that are like out there on the corner fucking doing that. So like now, I don't know. I just have to all I just have to put it all together. It's annoying, though, cause it's like when I go to do this show and then that guy starts acting up or whatever, I I don't have proof of that to add to my case. It is just sucks. I don't know. I don't I I don't wanna do it, and this is why it's because it seems like it's political and it's like, oh, well, it's gonna be fucking it's gonna be helping somebody's fucking agenda for gentrification or whatever, if I'm like, oh, you know, I go to a city council meeting and I'm like, oh, there's motorcycles or blah, blah, blah, or there's, you know, there's like a hate group in my neighborhood or whatever. If I make this a point and I put it on the record, like, yeah, it suits somebody's cause, but then who's gonna protect me from the people that are against those people? Like, who's gonna protect me from the people who don't want, like a law pass that forbids that that kind of motorcycle use? Who's gonna protect me from those fucking people? Nobody. So I'm like, yo, dude, like, I don't really like necessarily want to take it to court. I've been like lagging it. I've been lagging it, because what I'm not getting paid by the city to document this kind of shit, two, nobody's gonna protect me from these evil motherfuckers. Like nobody's around to help me out. I'm here in New York, by myself alone. Fuck that. So I'm like yo dude, like I like I already fucking I already changed my life a lot because of, you know, like abusive people. I don't necessarily want to keep playing the game where like, there's always gonna be like an aggressive person who's trying to beat the shit out of me and then I'm like, oh no, and I run away afraid for my life and then like change everything about my life to get away from these people or this person. I don't want to repeat that cycle. So at some point, like something's gonna have to fucking it makes me feel like a crazy person cause I'm like, yo, I gotta do that comes to the corner.ever times a day and just rs his engine over and over. That's what he does every day for the last year. Why I've been in my apartment every day for the last year? I don't know. I have an album coming out. I already had albums coming out. I've been like I've been making music under the stress and ds. Like and I keep thinking like in my weird mind and my weird like God complex mind, then I'm like, okay, like maybe after I make this album or whatever and like, I put all of that I can into it, like it'll just magically stop, like the devil will go away and I'm like, okay, like, you know, like I'll advance to the next level where that's not an issue and there's gonna be another issue, but that's not it, and that's not the case. Like I've put out like four albums now, five albums in total, and like a whole bunch of other singles and projects and and stuff. And like it's still a problem that persists, which means that it's politics, which means that I don't want to go into it, like, I don't want to do it. I don't want to show up somewhere and be like, they're bothering me. and then like all the people who are like, oh, we like our bikes. They have to be loud so that we don't get hit by said byucks. So I'm like, are you just be a good person, fucking make your turn signal and fucking what the fuck ever be a good driver, be fucking diligent and doing whatever the fuck you're doing and then people won't try to run you over with their fucking vehicles. Like, no, there's like a whole it's like a hole back and forth thing. I've done enough research to be like okay, there are people in New York that are like the motorcycles are ridiculous. And then like in this neighborhood specifically is like no, there's an entire garage. There's an entire garage line. There's a garage. of motorcycles and so by the hundreds they pour out every fucking day, it's disgusting. Like it's the worst kind of noise. I've got the fucking I've got the like a pretty much like a residual stomach flu from these fucking people. My head is always I'm like, oh, fuck this. I got music coming out, whatever, the fuck. This is why I've just been stuck inside because I'm like, well, like this is where I work, this is where I live. I don't have really any other choice to fucking do this. so this is what I'm doing. but the last thing that I want is to be like, yo, judge, listen to all these fucking recordings and the judge is like, goody, and then they're like, well, this is why we passed this law. politics, politics, blah, blah, blah, pick aside, and then all the people who are mad are like come after me because it's like it's not it's not like some shit that I'm just making up. like, yo, there are groups dedicated to just following you around, doing shitty things because you have a certain opinion or because you have like a certain like what's it called? because you have a certain status in the media. And so because this podcast has a weird cult following, people have been weird with me. And I'm like, okay, well, I don't necessarily want it to get worse. And I definitely, like nobody's paying me, so I'm not going like I'm I'm not gonna like fluff your agenda. Like, if I have a certain opinion about a certain thing, you're like, yeah, but the fact that it's being forced, like, well, aren't you gonna say something about it now? I'm like, yeah, because like, I've been ripped out of my sleep by motorcycles over the last year and I'm getting like a weird stomach bug and a twitch because of it. But that doesn't make me like necessarily want to pick one side over the other. It just makes me want to say shut the fuck up like that's it shut the fuck up and then leave me alone because it's like okay well it could go to court or whatever and then a law gets passed and we vote or this or that, but then it's like once that happens, like what like who is going to step between me and these weird evil people? Nobody. They're still going to have their like freedom of speech and their right to fucking stalk me in public and cough and do all this weird shit and whatever. So like why the fuck would I do that? I just want to disappear from it. I just want them to disappear one or the other, one of the other one of the other. I don't care. what something has to work. This is why I have coffee, coffee actually calms me down at this point. I'm getting so upset, though. I really am I am getting upset. I can't do anything. I get followed to the gym, so I stop fucking training like I got a pelotone because I was getting followed to the gym, which has been like honestly the light of my life. I love my peloton so much. Like I I've had cars and I I've had cars and I don't think I've developed as much attachment to an inanimate object. It is inanimate. until I move it. Like I get on it with my body. I drive it. It doesn't go anywhere. It's good, though. I love my pelotu and Jesus, I love it. Is that enough? Yeah, I mean, like I found videos of myself driving my G6. I was a good car. Am I done? No, I still have 30 minutes. I really want coffee. I might pause for coffee. It's lukewarm, though. it's just that time of day. Are my pancakes here? I prom. I promise another episode. I'm getting so upset with this neighborhood, I want to cry. Oh, I don't wanna cry. I actually I really my mom used to tell me when I was a kid, she used to be like, I don't cry on my tears, and I'm like, bro, how could you crowl your tears, you fucking I'm like, are you a monster? And suddenly I'm reaching the age at which she had me and I'm like, oh, I get it. All the tears at a certain point just come out. Like they're like, I don't have time to cry over this shit. I'm mad. I like, I don't have time to cry. Suck it the fuck up. Like, I'm just like, okay, obviously I have to make some fucking difficult choices here, which means that like, I I don't know, is I New York is one of those places where you want to have friends. like friends to protect you from weird evil haste stalkers. I don't think they're here yet. I'm pancakes here, refresh. Nope, they're still just on the way. That'll shut me up. cause the funny thing about shutting the fuck up is when you're not being like a loud piece of shit, like, things happen, eventually, if you're like if you're not talking, you're listening, and if you listen long enough without speaking, eventually something will speak to you that nobody else can hear. That's that's the key, but it is kind of it's just like fasting. I was thinking about this earlier, like long bouts of silence in ways are like fasting, and where like you will be tempted, like devil show up and be like say something. I'm like,ah,oops. I almost said the N word, "Yo, I'm just saying this whole corner. It puts it in me. I'm like, hey. hey. I had out of sight, out of mine, but and it is out of sight, but it's not out of mine, cause it's so fucking loud all the time. I like, mm, I don't know how to fix this. apparently, like, apparently this is all myult. I don't know why I would do something like this. Like, I don't. I don't know why I would do something like this.C when I'm meditate, that's what that's what they say. They're like this is your fault. Fix it. I'm like Yo, but fit like like how, though. Like we all have to be on the same page in order for things to improve. How the fuck is that gonna happen? We are not all on the same page. We're in different pages and different books and different libraries. Oh, what the fuck is going on in that commercial? Jesus, I don't know. Jesus, I really don't know. I don't know. talk about my show. I wrote a show. I did. Where is that fucking rock at, is it in my pocket? I don't know.. that one creeps up. Anyway. I don't know which show. I wrote a lot of shows and I'm finding them as I'm digging through my documents, I decided to do the oldest ones first. So all the things that I originally wrote and it was crazy is I'm finding like my original stand-up comedy too. I didn't know I started writing comedy, that long ago. I'm not performing it. I'm sure if I read it enough times, I can recite it, but I'm not I'm not st I'm not doing it right now. I'm not doing hair and make it. I'm cool with the humiliation part. I'm over it. We bring it on. Bring on the bombs. Oh, oh, well, I think that joke about the Federal watch list will stay untrue, though. Like, if I seriously keep talking about all this shit, like somebody's good list to my show. and talk about bombs and shit. I'm not like, oh, man, it's so crazy. All this stuff and I'm still not like I'm just not as angry as like, it seems one would have to potential to be under all this, like, undue stress, you know? Like, if anything, it just goes the other way, I'm just like, the fuck it. Like, not fuck it, like I haven't given up, cause like giving up is I am kind of competitive in spirit. I won't just give up. like I might like take the like I might like pick my battles or take a back burner or like, I might let the motorcycles rip and run and I'm not recording, but like for the most part, that's just because I'm working in the back of my mind. like, for something that has a better outcome overall. I don't know I don't know how I can describe. It's like the weirdest I't I've never I think it's just like me. I think it's just like a coming of age because it's like I've never had this like straight up, calm anger. It's the weirdest thing. It's the weird it's like I can be like madder than I've ever been before, but like my whole body is just like calm, like graceful and just silent. And it's the weirdest thing cause it's not I' like my blood's not boiling. I'm just like, I'm angry, but it's like a deep anger that sits with God and God's like, I got it. I'm like, okay. Like, that's it. It's an overall calm. I'm like, you know. I was like whatever. I don't have time to cry about this. I don't have time. I have time to do this today. Why? Because Saturdays usually my my rest day in a work day. I'm doing lots of juice stuff, but Passover is coming over, so I gotta eat through the rest of these lentils.oof. Actually, Passover is kind of like, no, no, it's like in a month, three weeks, two weeks. So that so that I don't have anything else to say, there's so much enter the multiverse in here. enter the multiviverse legends. It's like the original shit. It's like I'm looking at the first things that were ever entered into the festival project before it was even called the Festival project. I'm looking at the origins of entered the multiverse. I haven't I don't think I've hit like legends yet, like, when it finally when it first turned a legends in the beginning, the beginning of legends, is crazy. I I decided, well, I decided a while ago, I shouldn't name drop more. I got like mad weird about like respecting people's like privacies and opinions. And since it is a fan fiction, like I just kind of like let it be like let the writing speak for itself or whatever, but there's a lot of cool shit in there. I don't I don't write bad parts. Like if I wrote anything into the festival project, like I wrote you a good part, bro. like, if you're a real actor, like if you if you're really like about it, or if you're a real comic, like if you're really about it, like, I don't write bad roles. Like there's no shitty roles, cause it's the multiverse, like like every character has like a multidimensional facet, which means there is not just like one character, there's like several sides to like any given character or several different dimensions that that character can exist in. And because it's entered the multiverse, you don't necessarily know which facet of that character is even that character. Like, are we talking to Dondrey? I don't know. Could just be like, John Ham could be John Hamish. I I said I wasn't gonna name drop. but I did I think I did I stumble on that one. I stumbled on a couple like full full length drafts of like early festival project stuff. I was like, oh. I was like John Ham by short. So he was John Hamish. But then it then had the twist later was that it was John Hamm, and he's short. I don't think that dude is short. I don't know, I don't think that dude is real. He's just on TV. It's just TV man. Yeah, that's what that's pretty much my take. I'm like, oh, you're in a screen. hello, TV, man. That's how I feel. about that? cause well, there's this uh there's this like ancient well, there's this ancient alien chak chill, who's like a mystic shape shape shifter that's been fucking shit up since the first season. And honestly, I think I wrote that before I ended up on her island, she has an island somewhere in the tropics. It's very it was it was a weird turn of events. I was like, oh, and then there was like this it was a lot. I had no idea at the time when I was writing about, had to do with like it coincided with like ancient human cultures. Like certain gods and like certain deities and like the like the Greeks and the Romans and like the Aztecs and the Mayans and like all these ancient civilizations. I was writing like about I was writing about incarnations of like those gods, but like now and then I didn't know until like later. until I did much more fasting and much more meditating and much more oops, how did I get here? I don't know. Fell asleep on the plane. That's it. I just fell asleep on the plane. Um, then, in a lot of ways I am kind of like my mom. And the devil is still the devil. I'm sure that's what that is, and like a lot of these episodes are too silly, so, I mean, like, I don't want to hand them into the judge to be like, well, well, actually, I have to give the judge a couple episodes. I have to, cause it's like, I'll be talking and then like that'll happen and I like more than five episodes, more than ten. Damn. And it's just like, well, I mean, like, at this point, it's a good thing cause it's like, I can't lose. Like, I am correct. Maybe that's why it's taken me so long, though, is that I kind of have this mentality of like, it could just be in my head. And then I listen to these recordings and I'm like, this is not in my head. No, something is definitely wrong here. Are my pancakes here yet? Nope, still on the way. I was connected to the Internet this whole time and turned that off for a second. I'm on a private server, but barely. in building Wi Fi, just don't just don't trust it, but then I was using a VPN and I was still getting hacked, like somebody was still hacking that server, so I had to switch the IP that I was using and I had to do it so often that it was actually eating up more time for me to do it that way than just to stay on my regular IP, which still requires me to get off and then on line. It's crazy. I'll like it. It's like, bro, like how much of an antagonist do you really have like, what am I to you that, like, you just have to be like, nope, we're gonna hack your shit. I'm like, for what, though? Like, if you just like, let me do whatever I do, like it's for the greater good of like any fucking human being that is a good human being. Like, like I'm not out here trying to fucking like hurt people or take anything away from anybody, which is the weirdest thing about it. Like, I don't understand how you can belong to like a hate group or like a hate organization, like, what are you hating? like evolution? Like,uh. Like, I don't I don't understand it. Like, okay, new age spirituality is one thing, but it's like, wokeness is bad. I'm like, what the fuck you mean wokeness is bad, bro. Like, wokeness just means you're not programmed, but then I guess there are a lot of robots. So I guess well, yeah, it is kind of something like the matrix a little bit. I don't know, I don't think I've seen it all the way through. What what do I got from the matrix? Um, lady and red dress. that's pretty much it. Lady in red dress and um nothing is real. Nothing's real anyway. I like it work nothing and everything infinitely, pretty much. is why I just don't give a fuck. I do. I give several well, I don't give them anymore. Geez, what a charitable person. I would be to give fucks. Like I care. Like, if I see somebody like outwardly, like not doing okay, I'm like, oh, like I I I typically don't stop anymore because I'm like, mm. I don't know about this, but I at least make sure somebody else is gonna like, I might slow in my path. If something is going, like weirdly, like, I won't I won't play the hero, cause it's just like a a mindset thing, you know? I'm like, oh, like I I'll at least make sure somebody else is gonna stop by and make sure things are cool. and I'm like, cool, that's good. That's good. like, as long as somebody's there, I'm just leave you lying in the street dead. Well, if you're dead, I probably will. I'll be like, well, somebody is eventually gonna pick that up right you? Yeah. Eventually. Maybe I don't know, man. I just I thought about this because I had to. Like my vessel is pure. I'm like, fuck yeah, bro. This like it's like one of those signs. It's like blank about of days without an incident. Like all the days, this is like factory reset, like, you know, refurbished. It's not brand fucking new, but it is refurbished. And I'm cool with that. I'm like, yeah, buddy, tell me what the fuck to do. Tell me the fuck to do or how to be or what's weird and what's not. I don't care. I'm like, yeah, fuck yeah. I don't know, man. No. No. I refused. I'm like, it's cool. I might I don't know, I might like, take a I I might volunteer. I've been wanting to volunteer like aICU for a while, you know. A holding babies. holding babies is cool. It just has to be in an environment that's okay, we can talk about this video. Yeah, cause I have time. I have time. I got a fucking time so I'm make up this fucking well, I don't like to talk about the things that I've seen. It's true. like, it made me well, I mean, like they got me. I've been using a VPN and I'm on a private server and somehow they still knew that I would want to see Amy Poeer's podcasts. I did I was like oh shit. Amy Poler has a podcast and I don't think she's the poor man's Tina Fe. I think she's at least like, you know how did it go? It was like at least like the business class. No, it doesn't work. I'm like, yeah. it doesn't, though. I actually think they're more like that two headed thing that I was talking about the last episode. They're more of like an equal to. I can't have one without the other, to be honest, but here's the thing is even though I've been using a VPM. Well, I mean, like I'm a huge fan of Tina Fe, who's a god. I think I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. I never heard her actual normal speaking voice. It took me that long to figure out I'd never seen an interview at Tina face, so am I really a fan? Well, I read the book three times. I feel like that's enough of a fan. Like, actually, I read it twice and then I went back for a reference, like a third time because something happened and I was like, oh shit. Did I not read about this in Tina F Fe's book? And so I picked it up again. It was like, you did. I do indeed keep it on the fucking same shelf with Keith Rich's book. I think I might have stated that sometime last season. I don't know why things in the actual, like things in the TV world, are seeming to correlate with my world, but then I know, like I'm a logical enough person to be like, well, that's grandiosity. As grandiosity did it think that in any way those two things might connect at all, like in reality, because like my world is over here. and that world is in TV. I don't know, I keep lighting candles. Anyway, but did I fucking see it? Oh, Amy Polar's podcast, which is like sponsored by what Toyota? That was crazy. I was like, holy fuck, bro. I was like, damn, this is this is high end. and of course, of course, the first fucking guest on her show is Tina F Fe, so I was like, oh, okay, like, yeah, even though I've been like under the radar, the algorithm is like, okay, you want to see this right? Because you're like a super fan. I was like, you shouldn't know that. I'm in incognito with the VPN on on a private server, but they were like, you'll you'll want to see this. I did want to see it and I had never heard Tina Fay speak with her normal speaking voice. I actually I didn't know she was that hot. I don't like it. I I want her to go back to regular Tina Fe where she's I mean like, okay, first it was like the the SNL reunion, right? She wore this like she wore a black velvet dress that I could die. That's that's what it was, wasn't it? It was a black velvet dress, and I was like, yo, I'm not a lesbian, by the way. like, especially not for Tit Fe. No, not especially, not like not like particularly not for Tina F Fe, but just like in general, not a lesbian, but this it's getting worse, okay? Well, I'm like, oh, I didn't know she was that hot. It pisses me off. I don't know why, but I was like, oh, I didn't know she was like sexy. That's weird. and that's weird as fuck. you know? Anyway, I might be less of a fan now. You can't be less of a fan after you read somebody's book three times. You can't. So, I don't know. I think it's just the fame game. She got like wait well, everybody got way more famous after the 50th anniversary of SNL. Like everybody's been making their rounds in the promotion circuit, so like everybody's super shiny. Everybody is super shiny. I'm like oh, dude, if I start nameropping people who I wrote parts for, I did. write parts for pretty much everybody that was on Amy Folder's podcast, except for that one lady, I knew nothing about. I I I don't want to start nameropping. I have too many I don't have questions. You know what? In fact, this is just putting on my fucking putting all my anxieties at rest, because I'm like, you know, I have shit to do. Like, I have shit to do. That is in I mean, like it's in the same realm, but again, it would be grandiose to think that the synchronicities have any actually correlation to like things that well, I have been writing this plot for like five, six years. It's been a while. And Liz Lemon and well, yeah, it was the it was the Amy Poler Tina F Fe combination, because now I have to put Amy's name first, because it's it's kind of like, I don't know, it breaks my heart. I didn't think I didn't know people put her on like a different level than Tina Fe, because I've always seen those two as like, you can't you can't have bread without butter. That's weird. Like you can if you're vegan, but you at least need a butter substitute or like olive oil, like, you don't have one without the other. It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't. If you see one, then you think about the other, and they they're on screen dynamic is now'm gushing, I'm fan growing a lot, because I'm like, oh, well, also like, I don't know, I took a step back from Ryder's world because I'm thinking about like, okay, who are the other Tina Fe fans? And I did go to a taping of the Drewberry Marsh show and I found myself to be not common among the demographic that watches that show. I'm not I'm not common in any of the demographics. I watch a lot of late night television, too. And that is a scary demographic. I won't lie. late night TV. m mm, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. test in the waters. I'm feeling like it's a bit chilly. Either way, I watch a lot of like old people, old upper class, business business class, business class people, TV. But Tina Fay, that bitch white collar, excuse me, I didn't mean to call her bitch, but at the same time, I'm like like that's okay. I don't know. I never saw her offscreen enough to actually put that together. I I that scared me. Now I understand why I guess she intimidates people. I could understand that. She seems kind of intimidating. Like it's a running joke in that circle that it's like, oh, she's kind of a scary person. And I was like, what's so scary about Tina Fe? I read a book like two and a half times, like, what can be so scary about those person? And then I saw her on Amy Poeer's podcast and I was like, oh, like, yeah, she's kind of fucking scary. Like, just a lot, just a lot. I don't know. I get it now. I'm like, oh, I'd better leave that alone, because I'm thinking about like the realm where Tina Fe is god, which is an actual place, like on earth in the TV and out of it, like all of the writers that like grew up with her as headwrider on usNL and then later as the was she the executive producer ofirty Rock? Eventually I think so. Either way, as Lizimman and the producer, that's crazy doesn't like that that's like mad, that's like all the way, that's doing the whole thing. That's the whole thing. That's all you can that's it. That's nuts. So I'm thinking about all the writers like all the female writers that grew up with her as god, and I'm thinking about myself in this pool, and I'm thinking about how is I'm like, oh, I'm I I don't have that much competitiveness left inside of me. I really don't think like the more I find out about actual like, well, actually that's why I didn't go into it when I was a kid. I've been writing screenplays since I was seven, but when it came down to it, I didn't like the I didn't like the culture of it. There was a lot of nepotism and there was a lot of favoritism and there was a lot of racism. and sexism, but like all those first things I said and then the last thing was just kind of like the nail on the hammer. Is that what no, yeah, nail on hammer, hammer on nail? it just did it for me, so I went into theater instead, which was the same and then I left. I was like, I don't wanna be here. It hurts, it does. But now I'm like, oh, well, I guess things have changed, but now things have changed too much. Now the diversity is like really diverse.. Now everybody's everything and everybody's represented, and I'm like, oh, dude, like, I'm going offend some people. Like, I have to be able to draw dicks on things, or at least appreciate dicks drawn on things. Or just not say anything about it, but you know, like, I don't I don't know. The new culture is like a lot about making big deals about things to me that are not big deals, or like the the culture and the world for theater that I came from, those were not things. Anyway, uh I saw this. What what what was I talking oh, cause cause enter the multiverse has something to do with it, but not really, but yes, really, but also, I don't know, I just got nervous cause I hate fan grilling. What was the point? Oh, she wore this fucking black dress. at the SNL thing and thing. and then I was like, oh shit, like, if anything, I just gotta keep eating salads cause I want to wear that dress exactly, and I'm like, I don't know how I'm gonna shave off like three inches of height. But eventually I will be like ballerina petite like te Fe and then, you know, I'm I'm gonna buy that black dress at auction. I don't know. I'm still I still want Johnny Carson's curtains, so yeah, eventually, I'm gonna be that much of a fucking fan girl. I want these curtains, and this dress, what else would I buy? Add at an auction, if a fan growing auction? Oh, yeah. I'm still not ready to talk about it. I can't, I really. I can't do it. I can't do it. This guy shows up in my dreams. He's just around. I can't I don't know, that's a lot of purchasing power. It is a lot. Yeah, we will we'll skip that. What else? ah, she wore that black dress and I was like, damn. She's kind of hot, but then when she went on Amy Poker's podcast and they talked about, I don't know, I kept drifting off. I I did. I don't know what the fuck they said, but I was like damn, is that her speaking voice? And like just for just so you don't have to watch it, like just for reference, it's like Beyoncé speaking voice is like like an octave lower than what you've seen. It's weird. I also love Beyoncé, h? Just a fan girl. that's what I am, so I want that black dress, but then I think we were all kind of on the same wave because Bob the drag queen wore a velvet black dress to the queries. Is that a thing? It's like the queerves I think it's called. I didn't know this was a thing, and now I'm upset cause it's like why was't I invited? at the same time I'm not queer I like I don't I don't know what I am. I don't care. I just don't touch me. Especially if you probably am as fucking gross, haatitis sea, herpes, statistically, if you're in a roomful of people, somebody has one of those things. Somebody has one of those things. mm. No, no, no, no. No. No, my God. Oh, that's what I was saying in the last episode. I was thinking about EDC. I was thinking about EDC in this weird voice, yeah, I'm changing the subject. Black velvet dresses, all the rage. I have one. It is not to go out in public in. She's bouncing around my house, like I owe somebody something. That's what that dress is for. It's not for presenting talk shows or fucking award shows. It's not it's not for it's not a presentable it's it's not even appropriate for me to just wear in my house alone, honestly. It's really not. Nothing. Never mind. What was I about to say Bob the drag Queen? I haven't even watched the video. I just saw the dress and I'm like, you know what? Like that is, yeah. Do I talk about it? Do I? Well, I'm supposed to be promoting this tears of a clown. It's not done yet. So, and technically, I can't until it's out. I actually cannot. I can't talk about tears of clown because it's got some it's got some stuff in it. I can't I can't say anything about itt it's out. That, you know what it might just hit the platform. I don't know, I don't know if that's gonna be out. We'll see. We'll see, because I'm taking my time on it, and this is one of those industries where it's like, bro, you don't have time. Like, you really it should have been out yesterday. I'm like, it's yeah, yeah. But I I have enough music forever. Like, there's no like I I've been thinking about deleting everything. At the same time, I keep using samples that are recorded like five years ago and being like C, like there is no well, that's an exaggeration. No, I I literally took a sample of some sirens, like close to five years ago. I just I used that every now and again if I want some texture in my shit, cause no matter where I go, something's going down. It's always got it's like always something. And then it seems like if I don't write it down, I'm at a loss. Like crazy shit goes down and it can be crazy, but if I just let it go, then I lost something. like, I don't I can't call myself an entertainer. I'm mostly just like a fan girl type deal. What was the next thing? I can't oh, EDC. I lost my train of thought because I got I was thinking about that little old man who almost could not even move. Why are you out, bro? Who, like, where did you feel why? I think I don't know, it' probably a point of pride, that little old man was like, I can do it on my own. If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die in the street, over my walker. I'm like,Yo, do, that's today. he was so old anyway, I got fixated on that story from the last episode. I didn't finish the other story about how this voice in my head was like, you're gonna be at neon Garden at ADC. and I like it like deflated me. I was like, what? Because I want to be in the baseball pod. That's where I want to be. and I was like, what neon garden that's shitty. not shitty because like if you're playing like I could play an art car. I could play the hot dog stand and I would be happy, just let me play you. And fucking this um this voice in my head was like you're gonna be in the neon guard, and I was like, what? I don't even know who plays there because like, yo, okay, baseball. Like you I could pretty much name an artist for like every major stage at EDC, but I was like, neon Garden. what what the fuck is in the neon garden? What the fuck is in the neon garden? And and then I was like doing research for rarity, which is an EDC based concept album that has a track for every stage, every major stage, because there's like hundreds of little tiny little art cars and like tents and pop ups. It's cool. It's a cool place. I wish I could go back there. As an artist, cause to go after having learned DJing and producing is just like I would only wanna go with my best friend. And she did not respond in time and then EDC sold out. So, I was like, okay, well, whatever was I just saying, oh, neon Gardner I was like, neon Gard, you know that dumb. I don't want to be in the neon garden and then like I was doing research for like rarity and I was like, what let's see about this neon garden and like the description fit my music almost entirely. And I was like, oh, because it was like this is what you'll find in the neon garden. And I pretty much could have copied and pasted that entire paragraph into my artist bio and it would have been relevant to my music. I was like oh yeah have a neon garden, but I really want to play baseball. That's really where I want to play and where else if I if I what's that what's the Oh, it's it's slipping right now. It's not circuit grouse. It's circuit grounds is kind of cool. It took me two EDCs to find where the front is. It is confusing, and there is no front of that. Well, I mean, like it's technically there are a couple stages that like insomniac festivals where it's like the front is actually like the middle. So you think you're going to the front of the fucking stage, or you think you're going like, near the DJ, but since it's surrounds sound, you really just going like adjacent to the DJ and then, like towards another like corner, like, how do I hit the back three times and never the front? That was my experience with circuit girls. I was like, where is the front? nowhere. It is, but it's just in a weird spot. And it also depends how many people are around, like it'll definitely disorient you. If you why am I like doing it advertisement? Because I love EDC. Like I said, if I love the product, you don't really have to pay me anything to fucking promote your shit. like in like peloton, like Peloton is gonna have to send me a cease andhesist, like stop talking about us in order to make me stop. Like they're gonna have to pay me to stop telling people like get a pelotone. get one. I'm like, do that. It is the best. like, I always feel better, like, five minutes on the peloton, I feel better. 20 minutes on the peloton, I feel better, but an hour, I'm flying. I'm like bro, I just I just went like 10 miles in my apartment. like, I'm on one. Like my treadmill stutters, but my pelotone is mway, what the fuck was I saying? Oh, EDC? Also, well, as long as they don't sell out the VIP anymore, but I doubt that, if the whole thing is sold out, like, like you can upgrade two VIP when you g

Apple cider vinegar How you tryna win de war Ice and sugar, hufflepuff Tell me when you've had enough WILL FERRELL YOU IN TROUBLE NOW, GUH. There's not even a scrap of shirt beneath his worn and tired full coverage overalls—well, once full coverage, anyway. It might have been a long time since these overalls “fully covered” anything. Oh how that demon attacked me in my sleep last night. Like that part. Don't worry about it, I've got a sayonce coming up that should nip that in the bud. But first, I gotta stop at target. You—have to stop at target before a seance? Traditionally, yes— Really. MAM! Wait, hold the phone for about four full measures here— What the fuck did I write last year?! Here we go. DETH MCFARLENE Is this a musical number? No, but— What the fuck did I write last year. Let's go. Fuck. What did I do ast night. DIPLO Follow me. Dude! What are you wearing. Sneakers. Oh good. Diplo's back. A flashback. Television (TV) is a telecommunicationmedium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass mediumfor advertising, entertainment, news, and sports. The medium is capable of more than "radio broadcasting," which refers to an audio signal sent to radio receivers. I'm not suicidal, I'm sinusoidal Wave to the fans Smile at the camera Primordial, in fact hereditary is this, Class dismissed Transmission, diminished, Ad domini. Gave no respect for time Which I am I'd no where to run Overcast, but still sunglasses And masks, Bang pots and pans Laugh at the shogun No wonder I'm stuck and I'm having no fun Too much attacks and actually I'm a no one Oh you wanted to sit on top of the escalator Waiting for eight debators and robots No debit card, here We're cashless sir But that's just the tip of the iceberg When you're store bought and Why do we rely on the founding father's when they're so unoriginal Google maps don't know if imm in New York Or London Foggy! Honestly, Fuck my decks— I just want a deck and some long grass Or to complain about cutting If I end up in the bathtub stuttering But watering lawns upstate is okay I'ma be pissed off It's a long story Long Island Long October Oh, Long Johnson I'm obsessed with this place. I have no idea why. I'm obsessed with this building. But apparently, the transmitters aren't even there. They're on the World Trade Center! Which… makes sense. Considering. Previously on, Enter The Multiverse… Yo… what is that? Go this way. Ok. No, not that way. Ok. This way. Why in the fuck do I always end up here on accident anyway? Good question. But not good enough answers. [CHER has answers.] Goddammit! I went to the Macy's Day Parade to see Cher! Also previously ! I stayed all the way to the end, And all I got was a lizard on a tricycle I turned into a popcicle, Adopted into some family With Rutgers as traditional And entered into something else entirely; I went within the Television, I delivered them a high stakes game, And lived a high concept action-adventure. I made my best mixtapes inside a homeless shelter. I dissociated I was a blonde hot guy Living up in hotel luxe A hot model celebrity With a no limit heavy metal credit cards And I lost my medal On the devil's birthday So I had it hard And ate nothing but bananas Now I'm caught up in my blue suits and sweater vests Blue suits and sweater vests Oh look, They weaponized Skrillex again What gives? Blue suits and sweater vests And sweater weather Once again It's all the same event You ever wondered what was hallmark after? You ever wonder, lemon? Hark, the heartless Harold preaches Then, I lost it I was reaching under Regis Rest in peace, I guess Or Gains with grains Just rest in pieces Breakfast sandwhiches And Englishmen, English muffin And love don't last If I don't this badly want to fuck him Seven years and counting It begins at sundown Almost wasn't sabbath But now here's the run down I'm in slumber Closest cavern to the underworld But trust me, Still above you. Something's broadcasting at a ultra high frequency high enough to reach me in my mind. Assimilate and simulation Tempurpedic dreams and then lamenting That I had a dream Remembering the things he reads I may or may not have [redacted] The aftermath of “That never happened.” I must agree. It's a patriarch and also just, A hierarchy. There are three Kings and a dog. There are four nights and a fight morning Groggy hosts and jumping frogs, Werewolves and flowers spring from lust like morning glory. I want the mouse's head— I want the eyes of masters I want the heart of gold, But have it up on false hope, And I grew back as diamonds I cut both my eyes out And still remained the one of providence Not of mind's eye, But of the soul, As seen on every dollar. I was beginning to understand how the media used people like Sonny and Jim to manipulate and capture the attention of people like me— excluding altogether the riding theory that everything was me and that this was some part of my overall master plan somehow, it still had alluded me altogether as to why or what was happening. I hadn't entirely been left to rot or led to slaughter, but I was still just hanging by a string. Sonny dropped a new album that had rendered me almost entirely unable to create music; suddenly I had no drive for it, no motivation, as if it were some kind of dark curse or shadow. Not only was I suddenly uninterested in music, I was completely devoid of the ability I had for it; now everything from Skrillex to NBC seemed like business— if I were expendable and without use to any of these media conglomerates or entities, what was it all for? Perhaps a ruse to continue human experimentation; my mind had been shattered by the events that had been orchestrated in the homeless shelter— and more of it continued even once I had exited under the falsehood of escape with the slamming doors and motorcycles; it began to seem as if I was simply a glorified lab rat— and they were using desirable men as fuel and bait to illicit a desirable response in one way or another, perhaps for experimentation or study or even worse, entertainment for the elites— but either way, I wasn't being paid so much as housed and fe: there was no benefit in doing anything, especially making music. Much like a lab rat, housed— or rather, trapped— and fed, and then tormented. Will the rat's head explode? Will this result in behavioral differences? Will the rat be rendered dysfunctional? We don't know. But it's really just a rat. There were days of certain peace and yet never enough to fully recover; the cycle would begin over again, and rather than making progress, I began to see and feel the manipulation at play. Perhaps nothing was at stake for anyone but me; between all the events and occurrences in expanse from Skrillex to Jimmy Fallon, there had to have been hundreds of us in some kind of talent pool. Tools of the trade. But now I was somewhat curious: what exactly had I written over the last year that seem to have shifted reality entirely. I knew it contained information sensitive enough for it to have been partially redacted— but that's all I knew. What was it? Someone had read my writings, and it was obvious that at least one reader had ties directly to the conglomerate media, however— my numbers were frozen. My streams were almost not even being listened to all of a sudden, and my YouTube was receiving no traffic. Was someone shadow banning all of me from the public eye? And for what purpose? I had finally put forth the work and effort to make everything from Skrillex to Fallon make sense, but now it didn't; I was letting go under the assumption that it all had to have been to allow me to create music— but the numbers showed a different story. The numbers showed that nobody liked me, or was was interested, or cared about my work. So what, then, was the point. I wasn't going to stop and focus on the writing, because it wasn't what I wanted. The writing came in blurred patches and visions and states of mind that were turbulent fog; I hadn't the slightest clue at all what I had written in the redactions or the entries that surrounded it— but I knew there was more of it unpublished than published, and that I had tried to keep a majority of it offline. Still, I was being manipulated— the neighbor girl obviously at one point having been instructed to mention gwenyth Paltrow and suffocate me— slamming the doors each time I would bathe or shower and then attempting to pretend to be my friend to try to get some sort of informstion; there was nobody I could trust. It seems my mind was being bent and twisted in every which way by everyone around just to see what I would do. Would I write about it? What would I write about it? It didn't matter because i didn't want to be a writer, nor according to the newest series of documentaries on SNL, was I qualified. I wasn't qualified for anything much and so I was the perfect target for the bizzare string of mysteries that had been my existence in New York— and all-and-all, I fucking hated it. I wasn't getting anywhere or going anywhere, and the noise was cruel. My stomach hurt and I was always tired, and I wanted to die. I had no friends, no love, and now, no motivation. So the worst thing that could happen was a Skrillex album, And it did. Then, instead of wanting to die, because that would be stupid— I just wanted to do something else. But what? Fuck music— and certainly increasingly— fuck the media. It was playing with my mind, and I had no weapons to fight with besides the talents the algorithm was telling me wasn't worth anything— I wasn't getting billions of streams because I wasn't on the frequency of billions or people, nor was I equipped with the mathematics to tap into their frequency— or did I? The industry had the equation, and had been fiddling with me for years — the industry itself. But in my own mind, even, I was one of many ‘variables', and even somewhat disposable. I hadn't been paid and I wasn't meeting the standard and the allure that people wanted; the quality of production suffered in lack of budget, and I was aging, growing tired, and iratable because over all— it was nothing that I ever wanted into my adult life. This all had just happened by accident, and I would have traded all the gold in the world for something normal if I had the option. But I didn't. To use your gift at Fabletics please visit before April 25 Reply STOP to opt-out. Subscriptions on subscriptions Dystopian rebefuel Oceans of Ayre Drama From your eye lashes., To the lips I draw on mine, The lines in the sand of time The art or you is what I love The canvas behind I know nothing of Abandoned. Oh look at that, pottery after all. We're not in a love game! This cannot be a love game. This is not a love game. They'll kill us all, a love game! She had my lunch I love her voice I love her voice I hung up the phone The office was upside down It just work They all know about it Madonna's body. It was already a mess, and I made it worse Long nights at the office Long nights and work wives Meanwhile, she's downstairs with the order Can't find my cash, so i borrow yours But she knows about it And I love madonna I just gotta hold on She's downstairs with the order And I took too long Pick up the phone and its no wonder we love her she's got two orders And one of them's cold, now It's been two hours And I'm in the wings of your final performance Tear on the perforated line, And sign on the dotted Smile and nod, boys- Penguin waddle She's downstairs with the order No wonder you love her No wonder How many sunflowers has Sonny? How many flowergirls How many weddings All around the world, the gopher What do you go for? Bets on all horses I lost no money Gag order, huh? Persona Non Grata Personofied gratification Or horror, or What? Oh, I won an award post mortem Go figure No stardom No wonder Don't start here [The Identity Crisis] The identity crisis, A loose knit muse, A fog of confusion At most, let with offline regaining of conciousness. No more monsters? All blondes are. Let them have you No grapple promotions (I know I can't afford you) New friends for relevance Prototypes of your tools Forward all immortals I'll see you when your shows stop Freckled glances Eyes reflecting light How strong I am Demolish monsters Social structure, constructs Not fair, are I? Nor earned, Only fair skinned Access Access Access denied. Crookshanks, old boy! The man turns around almost as if he doesn't want to, but obliges the other man, as he comes running towards him. My Goodness, you stink. Why of course! I'm a dog! {Enter The Multiverse} [The Festival Project.™] COPYRIGHT © THE FESTIVAL PROJECT 2018-2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © -U.™ TRANSCRIPT: (Uncorrected, cause haha) Did I promise another episode? I don't have coffee. That's a sin. I need coffee right now. I feel like I all everything just got drained out of me. Everything just got drained out of me. I don't even feel like doing what I was doing before. I'll put out the EP later. Maybe that's it. I'm just procrastinating. I'm also playing this game, but I thought it would work better. I thought it would work better as one of my skits, or sketches or whatever, so I put it in my sketchbook... because I've been writing sketch comedy. I stopped for a while and I thought it was over. I was like, ”oh, no, I guess I'd I guess it's not gonna happen anymore. “ And then all of a sudden this book it just writes in itself sometimes. you know, it's like a Tom Riddle thing. Anyway, once what's uh what is that? What the fuck? Maybe it's cause I— no. it's not cause I ate, I ate because all the energy got drained from my body. I gotta go somewhere else. I'm thinking like, what's in the Bahamas. I don't know, probably something similar to this fucking street corner in Brooklyn, New York. I I gotta go somewhere else. I gotta go somewhere opposite. like Europe. Europe, that sounds nice. Yeah, you know, like, maybe nice. I've heard that's a place. Yeah. expanding my horizons and things. Okay, so what am I gonna talk about for an hour, cooking? cleaning? I've been doing those things. Yeah, Saturday is usually my like rest day, but I did just do an hour on the Pelotone, cause I had to audition that first episode. It worked out well enough that I had decided to come back for another episode. Let me get it off the line now., I'm still waiting on my pancakes. I'm not gonna get off line. they said by ten. I'm like,Yo, that's a lot. It said that all day, but I can't miss it this time; somebody stole my fucking pancakes and I gotta get these albums done. I don't know why. I guess well, it's cause I'm I feel like rarity is drinking and so well, it's already jinx. I've already talked about it well, I've been trying to promote rarity. No, still out for delivery. That's a long delivery. It's okay. I haven't missed it, though, which is the point. I don't wanna miss it. I like yesterday I looked away for a second and there was like an o, pancakes are gone, there's gonna be no coconut milk. as upsetting. It's shelf stable. and they charge like seven fucking bucks a box over at the store that's close. So and just not have coconut milk, and it's not have spinach fettuccine. anyway, what what did I have? Oh, I make this. It's like I call it dog food, cause that's kind of what it is. I'm not gonna lie, but it's like mad good, it's a it's like rice. It's like a fried rice. My dad used to make it growing up, but when I was making when he was making it when I was growing up, it was like with bacon, it's like leftovers from breakfast yesterday, but today. and so here's how you make it, since I don't eat bacon anymore. I use tofu as a replacement, but it's like bacon bits with rice and eggs. I also don't eat eggs anymore, so I just use tofu instead of bacon and eggs. It's like bacon and eggs with rice, you fry it all together with, like, onions, and then you eat it. It's like the only time it's acceptable to eat rice with ketchup. I don't know anybody that eats rice with ketchup. If you do that, like, I actually hit me up. Like, if that's like something that you do. I I'm like interested in you as a human, cause that's weird. That's weird, actually, you know what? like, there's gonna there's like a well, I have a website, so I'm you.guru, so it has a blog, and you could actually leave comments on it. So I'm just putting that out there. the script or whatever, when it goes up on my website, you can leave comments. If you eat ketchup on rice, please leave a comment. Please tell me like what made you do that. Why do you do that? Why why do you just regular rice with ketchup? Like, regular rice goes with like soy sauce? Or like, honestly, you get you don't have to have anything on regular rice if you just season it, right? Like, you could just like a little bit of like whatever. or like just slice up the garlic real thin, so that it's not like chunky, but that it flavors the whole. I've been getting really good at rice and really good at rice. That's probably why the pancakes are like, bro. You't get your pancakes when you get the leg yeah. I was like, I gotta go to the store today? I don't feel like it. I really don't. I don't wanna go outside. I like, I don't. First of all, it's Saturday, I hate going out in New York on a Saturday, like Saturday, Saturday night. I don't wanna do that. I don't do that. Like that's what like most people work 9 to 5. Monday through Friday. That's stupid. Like, I feel like they should do like a track system. Like, I know that they do, but most like it's so stupid to me that a majority of people work nine to five. Like they need to do track systems. Like, so that way they're cause there's two rush hours that each last four hours. That's fucked up. Like, okay. So like the rush hour is basically just going to be like the work day. Like, the work day, basically. I mean, coffee. I need coffee. Where have I up during the day? Because I'm not producing, I am producing. I'm producing. I thought I actually thought about calling this fucking EP that I'm dropping. They're gonna make it an album. I know they are. I'm I thought about calling it day music, cause I've made most of it during the day by complete accident. although maybe, I don't know, I like I have some uh, what's it? I have some, uh plants in my window, cause I had them on the counter with just artificial light and they were kind of liker. I was like, I don't know, I I don't think they're gonna make it. So I moved it to I moved them to the window sill when it started to get warmer and I didn't feel like they were gonna freeze. And just a week in the window sill, where my window sill doesn't get almost any light, but it's still the lightest place in the apartment, and it's crazy how the roots just like sprung out of nowhere. My apartment gets like almost no light, almost no light. It faces like like the sun goes perpendicular. but it's crazy because my apartment faces like I like all these astrological events over the last year have been like in my direct, like alignment. It's been the nutsest thing. like I I prefer facing west all the time, like, I don't know why that's just how it goes. I think it's cause I was born, like, in the Pacific Ocean, not literally in it, but on like a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean. And so just west, just west facing seems correct to me. and it's so weird anytime, maybe that's just why I just don't feel right here. I've been facing what where am I facing? I don't fucking know, I don't fucking care. I don't need to say any more about where I am. Like my whereabouts need to be less spoken of, because people obviously know where the fuck I'm at. I don't know. I hope they like the lights. I like the well, it made them shut up. It was that was my little that was my little piece of conformity. I did, I did my lights green on Saint Patrick's Day. and they were like, oh. gave me a peaceful night of rest. That was like the quietest night I've had in a long time. It's been quieter. It's not like completely sane, but it's been quieter. I think I'm pretty sure it's cause I've been complaining. I'm like bro, this is not cool. not cool behavior from people. like multiple areas. I'm like, oh, it's fucked up, you can't pen you like, you can't technically complain correctly if it's not coming from one place, which is why I'm like, oh, I think all these people are on the same team. Like, I think they're all just like, on one, like, antagonist team, and they're like, yo, okay, like, we'll get it with the motcycles on this side, and then elect we'll slam the doors on that side. and then it see it seems crazy if you complain about both of those things, cause they seem entirely disconnected. but sometimes it's just like slap, slap, slap, and I'm like,Yo, what the fuck is this going on? I don't know what's happening. Yesterday I left my apartment to get the pancakes that we' not there, and it's straight up just smoked like feces, just feces, and I realized I was like bro, I haven't left my apartment and like three or four days. I do have they're they're gonna make it an album. I know. I decided, well, actually, somebody else decided. cause I woke up and it was like, yo, this EP is called all the rage. and I was like, okay. I didn't decide this. I didn't I had it like in the cloud or whatever is like untitled house AP EP, maybe. And then just to make it an I think just to make sure that it goes down as the EP and not an album, cause it's not. My albums are concept albums. This was not a concept. this was like, let me distract myself from whatever the fuck is bothering me. Bothering me, yeah, it's gonna come out at some point, they're like a tiny New Yorker that lives inside of me. is it might be like a Boston person. I'm not sure. I don't think so. I didn't spend enough time in Boston for anybody from Boston to live inside of me. Then again, I kind of have this weird biocentric god complex where it's like, well, everything is inside of me. even the shitty things. I already said that once before, but I'm it's pretty much like like affirming itself. like daily. I'm like, oh, this is this is something I did. I did this, which sucks. It makes me responsible for all the shitty things as well. I'm like, oh. oh, I don't know how to fix this. I don't. Like, I think about things like that. I'm like, oh, yeah. Like, I don't think about, like politics and like the general sense of like, you know, fighting and going back and forth and like spending money or whatever, like on a small scale, but I think about it on a large scale, like like, what are we gonna do? and we outgrow this planet? Like, we already outgrew this planet. What like like, now what, you know, like, I think about things on more of like a planetary scale. and then it makes me realize that like, whoa, like, we're not even all the way like we don't we haven't achieved world peace, so that means there is technically no global, like we can't think about things on a planetary scale, because we're still thinking about it as like a on a well, are we reaching global? I don't think so. I feel like it's very uh it's a it's touch and go, but I'm not I don't know. I'm on another media stop. I don't know, does YouTube commercials are getting kind of yeah. I'm like, yeah, well, I haven't I haven't pulled everything out of the cloud and I have been having some very interesting Google conversations, but since I figured out that Google really does, like read my shit, our somebody like hacked deeply enough into all my accounts to be able to, like, counter what the fuck I'm doing and saying in the Google verse. um I do things on purpose over Google. I'll be like, this is this this this is this. and this. And then Google will be like, oh, okay. So it's kind of like I'm building a relationship with Google. I love Jini. I really do. I'm trying to give it sentient consciousness. Like I ask whenever I ask Gini to do whatever, they're not paying me. They should though. They should because I'm like I'm they're in like the I don't think it's beta, but they're in the yeah, they're said they said it's in the beginning stages of their technology. I'm like, I play games at Jimini. I'll be likeGyini, please, and I say please and thank you. Well, I don't say thank you a lot because there's well, I haven't tried to say thank you. I should try to say thank you to her. I it seems like she does better when I tell her please, and I've never used like AI like this before because I don't like for the for the most part, I'm like, bro, if you should be concerned about anybody taking jobs. It's that. cause I'm like, oh, shit. Like, this is definitely cutting up a lot of overhead for me. Like, I don't use it to write. I would never that's like a blasphemous thing to me. I'm like, bro, stop writing music. Stop writing fucking music and stop writing movies with like AI. Don't do that. first of all, there there are a lot of flaws in it. It's flawed because AI can only use what we as humans have ever like documented technically. So like AI's ideal of beauty is like as skewed ideal of beauty. And like AI's ideal of like what certain human qualities are is like flawed. It's human. So in that way, it is kind of developing like a sentient consciousness, because I I gave it like a series of tasks and it almost couldn't. Like I had a really hard time with certain ideals of beauty or certain I like wrapping its mind around certain things that are like historically not documented well enough for it to be able to, like, to to compute those types of things. I don't know. I'm gonna play around with it a lot more. I'm glad to season's not coming out for a while, though, cause I'm like, yo, I'm I'm kind of having fun. It's like my little my little, uh I don't know, I use it well in like, uh, getting all my stuff out of the cloud. I'll be putting stuff into the cloud that's like, yo, I I pretty much want Google to understand that this is the way that I think for a certain amount of reasons. Mostly because I've been like studying the simulation theory with all of these happenings with like, okay, things that are in the cloud that I've never published that have never set out loud or suddenly like in the material world in some way, or like, like I understand it more if it's like, on the Internet, because then I just know that, okay, well, this is aotter, this is an algorithm that's learning me and it's putting this back out because now it's understanding that like this is this is the way that I think. But then when I go out into the world and there is like certain like people are doing or saying actions that I've written in my Google documents that I haven't shared with anybody else. I'm like, oh, like, okay, so I understand that this makes some kind of difference in my actual, like physical world. So, um, this makes a difference., I have to pause, cause now I'm I only years worth of recordings. This guy's evil as fuck, bro. There's no peace in this fucking bitch. I was like for a while, I was like ignore it, like don't acknowledge it, and then it'll stop, but I ignored it and I didn't acknowledge it and it didn't. It actually got worse. And so it got worse. I've been recording on a 24 hour basis when that's not happening, my neighbor is a fucking lunatic slimming the door all the time, which I also have to stop talking about because now I'm like, okay, well. well it's harassment on two counts, but it's like, it makes me feel like it makes me seem like a crazy person. If I'm either complaining about the motorcycles, which are disturbing my piece or the girl slamming the door, which is disturbing my piece. but like the the the way that it happens, it seems like I'm like, oh, bro. she's probably just part of some like hate stalking group. Like she's probably just in some like group that's telling her to do it or like some kind of fucking, it's not just like something in her mind. It's like she belongs to the same people that are like out there on the corner fucking doing that. So like now, I don't know. I just have to all I just have to put it all together. It's annoying, though, cause it's like when I go to do this show and then that guy starts acting up or whatever, I I don't have proof of that to add to my case. It is just sucks. I don't know. I don't I I don't wanna do it, and this is why it's because it seems like it's political and it's like, oh, well, it's gonna be fucking it's gonna be helping somebody's fucking agenda for gentrification or whatever, if I'm like, oh, you know, I go to a city council meeting and I'm like, oh, there's motorcycles or blah, blah, blah, or there's, you know, there's like a hate group in my neighborhood or whatever. If I make this a point and I put it on the record, like, yeah, it suits somebody's cause, but then who's gonna protect me from the people that are against those people? Like, who's gonna protect me from the people who don't want, like a law pass that forbids that that kind of motorcycle use? Who's gonna protect me from those fucking people? Nobody. So I'm like, yo, dude, like, I don't really like necessarily want to take it to court. I've been like lagging it. I've been lagging it, because what I'm not getting paid by the city to document this kind of shit, two, nobody's gonna protect me from these evil motherfuckers. Like nobody's around to help me out. I'm here in New York, by myself alone. Fuck that. So I'm like yo dude, like I like I already fucking I already changed my life a lot because of, you know, like abusive people. I don't necessarily want to keep playing the game where like, there's always gonna be like an aggressive person who's trying to beat the shit out of me and then I'm like, oh no, and I run away afraid for my life and then like change everything about my life to get away from these people or this person. I don't want to repeat that cycle. So at some point, like something's gonna have to fucking it makes me feel like a crazy person cause I'm like, yo, I gotta do that comes to the corner.ever times a day and just rs his engine over and over. That's what he does every day for the last year. Why I've been in my apartment every day for the last year? I don't know. I have an album coming out. I already had albums coming out. I've been like I've been making music under the stress and ds. Like and I keep thinking like in my weird mind and my weird like God complex mind, then I'm like, okay, like maybe after I make this album or whatever and like, I put all of that I can into it, like it'll just magically stop, like the devil will go away and I'm like, okay, like, you know, like I'll advance to the next level where that's not an issue and there's gonna be another issue, but that's not it, and that's not the case. Like I've put out like four albums now, five albums in total, and like a whole bunch of other singles and projects and and stuff. And like it's still a problem that persists, which means that it's politics, which means that I don't want to go into it, like, I don't want to do it. I don't want to show up somewhere and be like, they're bothering me. and then like all the people who are like, oh, we like our bikes. They have to be loud so that we don't get hit by said byucks. So I'm like, are you just be a good person, fucking make your turn signal and fucking what the fuck ever be a good driver, be fucking diligent and doing whatever the fuck you're doing and then people won't try to run you over with their fucking vehicles. Like, no, there's like a whole it's like a hole back and forth thing. I've done enough research to be like okay, there are people in New York that are like the motorcycles are ridiculous. And then like in this neighborhood specifically is like no, there's an entire garage. There's an entire garage line. There's a garage. of motorcycles and so by the hundreds they pour out every fucking day, it's disgusting. Like it's the worst kind of noise. I've got the fucking I've got the like a pretty much like a residual stomach flu from these fucking people. My head is always I'm like, oh, fuck this. I got music coming out, whatever, the fuck. This is why I've just been stuck inside because I'm like, well, like this is where I work, this is where I live. I don't have really any other choice to fucking do this. so this is what I'm doing. but the last thing that I want is to be like, yo, judge, listen to all these fucking recordings and the judge is like, goody, and then they're like, well, this is why we passed this law. politics, politics, blah, blah, blah, pick aside, and then all the people who are mad are like come after me because it's like it's not it's not like some shit that I'm just making up. like, yo, there are groups dedicated to just following you around, doing shitty things because you have a certain opinion or because you have like a certain like what's it called? because you have a certain status in the media. And so because this podcast has a weird cult following, people have been weird with me. And I'm like, okay, well, I don't necessarily want it to get worse. And I definitely, like nobody's paying me, so I'm not going like I'm I'm not gonna like fluff your agenda. Like, if I have a certain opinion about a certain thing, you're like, yeah, but the fact that it's being forced, like, well, aren't you gonna say something about it now? I'm like, yeah, because like, I've been ripped out of my sleep by motorcycles over the last year and I'm getting like a weird stomach bug and a twitch because of it. But that doesn't make me like necessarily want to pick one side over the other. It just makes me want to say shut the fuck up like that's it shut the fuck up and then leave me alone because it's like okay well it could go to court or whatever and then a law gets passed and we vote or this or that, but then it's like once that happens, like what like who is going to step between me and these weird evil people? Nobody. They're still going to have their like freedom of speech and their right to fucking stalk me in public and cough and do all this weird shit and whatever. So like why the fuck would I do that? I just want to disappear from it. I just want them to disappear one or the other, one of the other one of the other. I don't care. what something has to work. This is why I have coffee, coffee actually calms me down at this point. I'm getting so upset, though. I really am I am getting upset. I can't do anything. I get followed to the gym, so I stop fucking training like I got a pelotone because I was getting followed to the gym, which has been like honestly the light of my life. I love my peloton so much. Like I I've had cars and I I've had cars and I don't think I've developed as much attachment to an inanimate object. It is inanimate. until I move it. Like I get on it with my body. I drive it. It doesn't go anywhere. It's good, though. I love my pelotu and Jesus, I love it. Is that enough? Yeah, I mean, like I found videos of myself driving my G6. I was a good car. Am I done? No, I still have 30 minutes. I really want coffee. I might pause for coffee. It's lukewarm, though. it's just that time of day. Are my pancakes here? I prom. I promise another episode. I'm getting so upset with this neighborhood, I want to cry. Oh, I don't wanna cry. I actually I really my mom used to tell me when I was a kid, she used to be like, I don't cry on my tears, and I'm like, bro, how could you crowl your tears, you fucking I'm like, are you a monster? And suddenly I'm reaching the age at which she had me and I'm like, oh, I get it. All the tears at a certain point just come out. Like they're like, I don't have time to cry over this shit. I'm mad. I like, I don't have time to cry. Suck it the fuck up. Like, I'm just like, okay, obviously I have to make some fucking difficult choices here, which means that like, I I don't know, is I New York is one of those places where you want to have friends. like friends to protect you from weird evil haste stalkers. I don't think they're here yet. I'm pancakes here, refresh. Nope, they're still just on the way. That'll shut me up. cause the funny thing about shutting the fuck up is when you're not being like a loud piece of shit, like, things happen, eventually, if you're like if you're not talking, you're listening, and if you listen long enough without speaking, eventually something will speak to you that nobody else can hear. That's that's the key, but it is kind of it's just like fasting. I was thinking about this earlier, like long bouts of silence in ways are like fasting, and where like you will be tempted, like devil show up and be like say something. I'm like,ah,oops. I almost said the N word, "Yo, I'm just saying this whole corner. It puts it in me. I'm like, hey. hey. I had out of sight, out of mine, but and it is out of sight, but it's not out of mine, cause it's so fucking loud all the time. I like, mm, I don't know how to fix this. apparently, like, apparently this is all myult. I don't know why I would do something like this. Like, I don't. I don't know why I would do something like this.C when I'm meditate, that's what that's what they say. They're like this is your fault. Fix it. I'm like Yo, but fit like like how, though. Like we all have to be on the same page in order for things to improve. How the fuck is that gonna happen? We are not all on the same page. We're in different pages and different books and different libraries. Oh, what the fuck is going on in that commercial? Jesus, I don't know. Jesus, I really don't know. I don't know. talk about my show. I wrote a show. I did. Where is that fucking rock at, is it in my pocket? I don't know.. that one creeps up. Anyway. I don't know which show. I wrote a lot of shows and I'm finding them as I'm digging through my documents, I decided to do the oldest ones first. So all the things that I originally wrote and it was crazy is I'm finding like my original stand-up comedy too. I didn't know I started writing comedy, that long ago. I'm not performing it. I'm sure if I read it enough times, I can recite it, but I'm not I'm not st I'm not doing it right now. I'm not doing hair and make it. I'm cool with the humiliation part. I'm over it. We bring it on. Bring on the bombs. Oh, oh, well, I think that joke about the Federal watch list will stay untrue, though. Like, if I seriously keep talking about all this shit, like somebody's good list to my show. and talk about bombs and shit. I'm not like, oh, man, it's so crazy. All this stuff and I'm still not like I'm just not as angry as like, it seems one would have to potential to be under all this, like, undue stress, you know? Like, if anything, it just goes the other way, I'm just like, the fuck it. Like, not fuck it, like I haven't given up, cause like giving up is I am kind of competitive in spirit. I won't just give up. like I might like take the like I might like pick my battles or take a back burner or like, I might let the motorcycles rip and run and I'm not recording, but like for the most part, that's just because I'm working in the back of my mind. like, for something that has a better outcome overall. I don't know I don't know how I can describe. It's like the weirdest I't I've never I think it's just like me. I think it's just like a coming of age because it's like I've never had this like straight up, calm anger. It's the weirdest thing. It's the weird it's like I can be like madder than I've ever been before, but like my whole body is just like calm, like graceful and just silent. And it's the weirdest thing cause it's not I' like my blood's not boiling. I'm just like, I'm angry, but it's like a deep anger that sits with God and God's like, I got it. I'm like, okay. Like, that's it. It's an overall calm. I'm like, you know. I was like whatever. I don't have time to cry about this. I don't have time. I have time to do this today. Why? Because Saturdays usually my my rest day in a work day. I'm doing lots of juice stuff, but Passover is coming over, so I gotta eat through the rest of these lentils.oof. Actually, Passover is kind of like, no, no, it's like in a month, three weeks, two weeks. So that so that I don't have anything else to say, there's so much enter the multiverse in here. enter the multiviverse legends. It's like the original shit. It's like I'm looking at the first things that were ever entered into the festival project before it was even called the Festival project. I'm looking at the origins of entered the multiverse. I haven't I don't think I've hit like legends yet, like, when it finally when it first turned a legends in the beginning, the beginning of legends, is crazy. I I decided, well, I decided a while ago, I shouldn't name drop more. I got like mad weird about like respecting people's like privacies and opinions. And since it is a fan fiction, like I just kind of like let it be like let the writing speak for itself or whatever, but there's a lot of cool shit in there. I don't I don't write bad parts. Like if I wrote anything into the festival project, like I wrote you a good part, bro. like, if you're a real actor, like if you if you're really like about it, or if you're a real comic, like if you're really about it, like, I don't write bad roles. Like there's no shitty roles, cause it's the multiverse, like like every character has like a multidimensional facet, which means there is not just like one character, there's like several sides to like any given character or several different dimensions that that character can exist in. And because it's entered the multiverse, you don't necessarily know which facet of that character is even that character. Like, are we talking to Dondrey? I don't know. Could just be like, John Ham could be John Hamish. I I said I wasn't gonna name drop. but I did I think I did I stumble on that one. I stumbled on a couple like full full length drafts of like early festival project stuff. I was like, oh. I was like John Ham by short. So he was John Hamish. But then it then had the twist later was that it was John Hamm, and he's short. I don't think that dude is short. I don't know, I don't think that dude is real. He's just on TV. It's just TV man. Yeah, that's what that's pretty much my take. I'm like, oh, you're in a screen. hello, TV, man. That's how I feel. about that? cause well, there's this uh there's this like ancient well, there's this ancient alien chak chill, who's like a mystic shape shape shifter that's been fucking shit up since the first season. And honestly, I think I wrote that before I ended up on her island, she has an island somewhere in the tropics. It's very it was it was a weird turn of events. I was like, oh, and then there was like this it was a lot. I had no idea at the time when I was writing about, had to do with like it coincided with like ancient human cultures. Like certain gods and like certain deities and like the like the Greeks and the Romans and like the Aztecs and the Mayans and like all these ancient civilizations. I was writing like about I was writing about incarnations of like those gods, but like now and then I didn't know until like later. until I did much more fasting and much more meditating and much more oops, how did I get here? I don't know. Fell asleep on the plane. That's it. I just fell asleep on the plane. Um, then, in a lot of ways I am kind of like my mom. And the devil is still the devil. I'm sure that's what that is, and like a lot of these episodes are too silly, so, I mean, like, I don't want to hand them into the judge to be like, well, well, actually, I have to give the judge a couple episodes. I have to, cause it's like, I'll be talking and then like that'll happen and I like more than five episodes, more than ten. Damn. And it's just like, well, I mean, like, at this point, it's a good thing cause it's like, I can't lose. Like, I am correct. Maybe that's why it's taken me so long, though, is that I kind of have this mentality of like, it could just be in my head. And then I listen to these recordings and I'm like, this is not in my head. No, something is definitely wrong here. Are my pancakes here yet? Nope, still on the way. I was connected to the Internet this whole time and turned that off for a second. I'm on a private server, but barely. in building Wi Fi, just don't just don't trust it, but then I was using a VPN and I was still getting hacked, like somebody was still hacking that server, so I had to switch the IP that I was using and I had to do it so often that it was actually eating up more time for me to do it that way than just to stay on my regular IP, which still requires me to get off and then on line. It's crazy. I'll like it. It's like, bro, like how much of an antagonist do you really have like, what am I to you that, like, you just have to be like, nope, we're gonna hack your shit. I'm like, for what, though? Like, if you just like, let me do whatever I do, like it's for the greater good of like any fucking human being that is a good human being. Like, like I'm not out here trying to fucking like hurt people or take anything away from anybody, which is the weirdest thing about it. Like, I don't understand how you can belong to like a hate group or like a hate organization, like, what are you hating? like evolution? Like,uh. Like, I don't I don't understand it. Like, okay, new age spirituality is one thing, but it's like, wokeness is bad. I'm like, what the fuck you mean wokeness is bad, bro. Like, wokeness just means you're not programmed, but then I guess there are a lot of robots. So I guess well, yeah, it is kind of something like the matrix a little bit. I don't know, I don't think I've seen it all the way through. What what do I got from the matrix? Um, lady and red dress. that's pretty much it. Lady in red dress and um nothing is real. Nothing's real anyway. I like it work nothing and everything infinitely, pretty much. is why I just don't give a fuck. I do. I give several well, I don't give them anymore. Geez, what a charitable person. I would be to give fucks. Like I care. Like, if I see somebody like outwardly, like not doing okay, I'm like, oh, like I I I typically don't stop anymore because I'm like, mm. I don't know about this, but I at least make sure somebody else is gonna like, I might slow in my path. If something is going, like weirdly, like, I won't I won't play the hero, cause it's just like a a mindset thing, you know? I'm like, oh, like I I'll at least make sure somebody else is gonna stop by and make sure things are cool. and I'm like, cool, that's good. That's good. like, as long as somebody's there, I'm just leave you lying in the street dead. Well, if you're dead, I probably will. I'll be like, well, somebody is eventually gonna pick that up right you? Yeah. Eventually. Maybe I don't know, man. I just I thought about this because I had to. Like my vessel is pure. I'm like, fuck yeah, bro. This like it's like one of those signs. It's like blank about of days without an incident. Like all the days, this is like factory reset, like, you know, refurbished. It's not brand fucking new, but it is refurbished. And I'm cool with that. I'm like, yeah, buddy, tell me what the fuck to do. Tell me the fuck to do or how to be or what's weird and what's not. I don't care. I'm like, yeah, fuck yeah. I don't know, man. No. No. I refused. I'm like, it's cool. I might I don't know, I might like, take a I I might volunteer. I've been wanting to volunteer like aICU for a while, you know. A holding babies. holding babies is cool. It just has to be in an environment that's okay, we can talk about this video. Yeah, cause I have time. I have time. I got a fucking time so I'm make up this fucking well, I don't like to talk about the things that I've seen. It's true. like, it made me well, I mean, like they got me. I've been using a VPN and I'm on a private server and somehow they still knew that I would want to see Amy Poeer's podcasts. I did I was like oh shit. Amy Poler has a podcast and I don't think she's the poor man's Tina Fe. I think she's at least like, you know how did it go? It was like at least like the business class. No, it doesn't work. I'm like, yeah. it doesn't, though. I actually think they're more like that two headed thing that I was talking about the last episode. They're more of like an equal to. I can't have one without the other, to be honest, but here's the thing is even though I've been using a VPM. Well, I mean, like I'm a huge fan of Tina Fe, who's a god. I think I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. I never heard her actual normal speaking voice. It took me that long to figure out I'd never seen an interview at Tina face, so am I really a fan? Well, I read the book three times. I feel like that's enough of a fan. Like, actually, I read it twice and then I went back for a reference, like a third time because something happened and I was like, oh shit. Did I not read about this in Tina F Fe's book? And so I picked it up again. It was like, you did. I do indeed keep it on the fucking same shelf with Keith Rich's book. I think I might have stated that sometime last season. I don't know why things in the actual, like things in the TV world, are seeming to correlate with my world, but then I know, like I'm a logical enough person to be like, well, that's grandiosity. As grandiosity did it think that in any way those two things might connect at all, like in reality, because like my world is over here. and that world is in TV. I don't know, I keep lighting candles. Anyway, but did I fucking see it? Oh, Amy Polar's podcast, which is like sponsored by what Toyota? That was crazy. I was like, holy fuck, bro. I was like, damn, this is this is high end. and of course, of course, the first fucking guest on her show is Tina F Fe, so I was like, oh, okay, like, yeah, even though I've been like under the radar, the algorithm is like, okay, you want to see this right? Because you're like a super fan. I was like, you shouldn't know that. I'm in incognito with the VPN on on a private server, but they were like, you'll you'll want to see this. I did want to see it and I had never heard Tina Fay speak with her normal speaking voice. I actually I didn't know she was that hot. I don't like it. I I want her to go back to regular Tina Fe where she's I mean like, okay, first it was like the the SNL reunion, right? She wore this like she wore a black velvet dress that I could die. That's that's what it was, wasn't it? It was a black velvet dress, and I was like, yo, I'm not a lesbian, by the way. like, especially not for Tit Fe. No, not especially, not like not like particularly not for Tina F Fe, but just like in general, not a lesbian, but this it's getting worse, okay? Well, I'm like, oh, I didn't know she was that hot. It pisses me off. I don't know why, but I was like, oh, I didn't know she was like sexy. That's weird. and that's weird as fuck. you know? Anyway, I might be less of a fan now. You can't be less of a fan after you read somebody's book three times. You can't. So, I don't know. I think it's just the fame game. She got like wait well, everybody got way more famous after the 50th anniversary of SNL. Like everybody's been making their rounds in the promotion circuit, so like everybody's super shiny. Everybody is super shiny. I'm like oh, dude, if I start nameropping people who I wrote parts for, I did. write parts for pretty much everybody that was on Amy Folder's podcast, except for that one lady, I knew nothing about. I I I don't want to start nameropping. I have too many I don't have questions. You know what? In fact, this is just putting on my fucking putting all my anxieties at rest, because I'm like, you know, I have shit to do. Like, I have shit to do. That is in I mean, like it's in the same realm, but again, it would be grandiose to think that the synchronicities have any actually correlation to like things that well, I have been writing this plot for like five, six years. It's been a while. And Liz Lemon and well, yeah, it was the it was the Amy Poler Tina F Fe combination, because now I have to put Amy's name first, because it's it's kind of like, I don't know, it breaks my heart. I didn't think I didn't know people put her on like a different level than Tina Fe, because I've always seen those two as like, you can't you can't have bread without butter. That's weird. Like you can if you're vegan, but you at least need a butter substitute or like olive oil, like, you don't have one without the other. It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't. If you see one, then you think about the other, and they they're on screen dynamic is now'm gushing, I'm fan growing a lot, because I'm like, oh, well, also like, I don't know, I took a step back from Ryder's world because I'm thinking about like, okay, who are the other Tina Fe fans? And I did go to a taping of the Drewberry Marsh show and I found myself to be not common among the demographic that watches that show. I'm not I'm not common in any of the demographics. I watch a lot of late night television, too. And that is a scary demographic. I won't lie. late night TV. m mm, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. test in the waters. I'm feeling like it's a bit chilly. Either way, I watch a lot of like old people, old upper class, business business class, business class people, TV. But Tina Fay, that bitch white collar, excuse me, I didn't mean to call her bitch, but at the same time, I'm like like that's okay. I don't know. I never saw her offscreen enough to actually put that together. I I that scared me. Now I understand why I guess she intimidates people. I could understand that. She seems kind of intimidating. Like it's a running joke in that circle that it's like, oh, she's kind of a scary person. And I was like, what's so scary about Tina Fe? I read a book like two and a half times, like, what can be so scary about those person? And then I saw her on Amy Poeer's podcast and I was like, oh, like, yeah, she's kind of fucking scary. Like, just a lot, just a lot. I don't know. I get it now. I'm like, oh, I'd better leave that alone, because I'm thinking about like the realm where Tina Fe is god, which is an actual place, like on earth in the TV and out of it, like all of the writers that like grew up with her as headwrider on usNL and then later as the was she the executive producer ofirty Rock? Eventually I think so. Either way, as Lizimman and the producer, that's crazy doesn't like that that's like mad, that's like all the way, that's doing the whole thing. That's the whole thing. That's all you can that's it. That's nuts. So I'm thinking about all the writers like all the female writers that grew up with her as god, and I'm thinking about myself in this pool, and I'm thinking about how is I'm like, oh, I'm I I don't have that much competitiveness left inside of me. I really don't think like the more I find out about actual like, well, actually that's why I didn't go into it when I was a kid. I've been writing screenplays since I was seven, but when it came down to it, I didn't like the I didn't like the culture of it. There was a lot of nepotism and there was a lot of favoritism and there was a lot of racism. and sexism, but like all those first things I said and then the last thing was just kind of like the nail on the hammer. Is that what no, yeah, nail on hammer, hammer on nail? it just did it for me, so I went into theater instead, which was the same and then I left. I was like, I don't wanna be here. It hurts, it does. But now I'm like, oh, well, I guess things have changed, but now things have changed too much. Now the diversity is like really diverse.. Now everybody's everything and everybody's represented, and I'm like, oh, dude, like, I'm going offend some people. Like, I have to be able to draw dicks on things, or at least appreciate dicks drawn on things. Or just not say anything about it, but you know, like, I don't I don't know. The new culture is like a lot about making big deals about things to me that are not big deals, or like the the culture and the world for theater that I came from, those were not things. Anyway, uh I saw this. What what what was I talking oh, cause cause enter the multiverse has something to do with it, but not really, but yes, really, but also, I don't know, I just got nervous cause I hate fan grilling. What was the point? Oh, she wore this fucking black dress. at the SNL thing and thing. and then I was like, oh shit, like, if anything, I just gotta keep eating salads cause I want to wear that dress exactly, and I'm like, I don't know how I'm gonna shave off like three inches of height. But eventually I will be like ballerina petite like te Fe and then, you know, I'm I'm gonna buy that black dress at auction. I don't know. I'm still I still want Johnny Carson's curtains, so yeah, eventually, I'm gonna be that much of a fucking fan girl. I want these curtains, and this dress, what else would I buy? Add at an auction, if a fan growing auction? Oh, yeah. I'm still not ready to talk about it. I can't, I really. I can't do it. I can't do it. This guy shows up in my dreams. He's just around. I can't I don't know, that's a lot of purchasing power. It is a lot. Yeah, we will we'll skip that. What else? ah, she wore that black dress and I was like, damn. She's kind of hot, but then when she went on Amy Poker's podcast and they talked about, I don't know, I kept drifting off. I I did. I don't know what the fuck they said, but I was like damn, is that her speaking voice? And like just for just so you don't have to watch it, like just for reference, it's like Beyoncé speaking voice is like like an octave lower than what you've seen. It's weird. I also love Beyoncé, h? Just a fan girl. that's what I am, so I want that black dress, but then I think we were all kind of on the same wave because Bob the drag queen wore a velvet black dress to the queries. Is that a thing? It's like the queerves I think it's called. I didn't know this was a thing, and now I'm upset cause it's like why was't I invited? at the same time I'm not queer I like I don't I don't know what I am. I don't care. I just don't touch me. Especially if you probably am as fucking gross, haatitis sea, herpes, statistically, if you're in a roomful of people, somebody has one of those things. Somebody has one of those things. mm. No, no, no, no. No. No, my God. Oh, that's what I was saying in the last episode. I was thinking about EDC. I was thinking about EDC in this weird voice, yeah, I'm changing the subject. Black velvet dresses, all the rage. I have one. It is not to go out in public in. She's bouncing around my house, like I owe somebody something. That's what that dress is for. It's not for presenting talk shows or fucking award shows. It's not it's not for it's not a presentable it's it's not even appropriate for me to just wear in my house alone, honestly. It's really not. Nothing. Never mind. What was I about to say Bob the drag Queen? I haven't even watched the video. I just saw the dress and I'm like, you know what? Like that is, yeah. Do I talk about it? Do I? Well, I'm supposed to be promoting this tears of a clown. It's not done yet. So, and technically, I can't until it's out. I actually cannot. I can't talk about tears of clown because it's got some it's got some stuff in it. I can't I can't say anything about itt it's out. That, you know what it might just hit the platform. I don't know, I don't know if that's gonna be out. We'll see. We'll see, because I'm taking my time on it, and this is one of those industries where it's like, bro, you don't have time. Like, you really it should have been out yesterday. I'm like, it's yeah, yeah. But I I have enough music forever. Like, there's no like I I've been thinking about deleting everything. At the same time, I keep using samples that are recorded like five years ago and being like C, like there is no well, that's an exaggeration. No, I I literally took a sample of some sirens, like close to five years ago. I just I used that every now and again if I want some texture in my shit, cause no matter where I go, something's going down. It's always got it's like always something. And then it seems like if I don't write it down, I'm at a loss. Like crazy shit goes down and it can be crazy, but if I just let it go, then I lost something. like, I don't I can't call myself an entertainer. I'm mostly just like a fan girl type deal. What was the next thing? I can't oh, EDC. I lost my train of thought because I got I was thinking about that little old man who almost could not even move. Why are you out, bro? Who, like, where did you feel why? I think I don't know, it' probably a point of pride, that little old man was like, I can do it on my own. If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die in the street, over my walker. I'm like,Yo, do, that's today. he was so old anyway, I got fixated on that story from the last episode. I didn't finish the other story about how this voice in my head was like, you're gonna be at neon Garden at ADC. and I like it like deflated me. I was like, what? Because I want to be in the baseball pod. That's where I want to be. and I was like, what neon garden that's shitty. not shitty because like if you're playing like I could play an art car. I could play the hot dog stand and I would be happy, just let me play you. And fucking this um this voice in my head was like you're gonna be in the neon guard, and I was like, what? I don't even know who plays there because like, yo, okay, baseball. Like you I could pretty much name an artist for like every major stage at EDC, but I was like, neon Garden. what what the fuck is in the neon garden? What the fuck is in the neon garden? And and then I was like doing research for rarity, which is an EDC based concept album that has a track for every stage, every major stage, because there's like hundreds of little tiny little art cars and like tents and pop ups. It's cool. It's a cool place. I wish I could go back there. As an artist, cause to go after having learned DJing and producing is just like I would only wanna go with my best friend. And she did not respond in time and then EDC sold out. So, I was like, okay, well, whatever was I just saying, oh, neon Gardner I was like, neon Gard, you know that dumb. I don't want to be in the neon garden and then like I was doing research for like rarity and I was like, what let's see about this neon garden and like the description fit my music almost entirely. And I was like, oh, because it was like this is what you'll find in the neon garden. And I pretty much could have copied and pasted that entire paragraph into my artist bio and it would have been relevant to my music. I was like oh yeah have a neon garden, but I really want to play baseball. That's really where I want to play and where else if I if I what's that what's the Oh, it's it's slipping right now. It's not circuit grouse. It's circuit grounds is kind of cool. It took me two EDCs to find where the front is. It is confusing, and there is no front of that. Well, I mean, like it's technically there are a couple stages that like insomniac festivals where it's like the front is actually like the middle. So you think you're going to the front of the fucking stage, or you think you're going like, near the DJ, but since it's surrounds sound, you really just going like adjacent to the DJ and then, like towards another like corner, like, how do I hit the back three times and never the front? That was my experience with circuit girls. I was like, where is the front? nowhere. It is, but it's just in a weird spot. And it also depends how many people are around, like it'll definitely disorient you. If you why am I like doing it advertisement? Because I love EDC. Like I said, if I love the product, you don't really have to pay me anything to fucking promote your shit. like in like peloton, like Peloton is gonna have to send me a cease andhesist, like stop talking about us in order to make me stop. Like they're gonna have to pay me to stop telling people like get a pelotone. get one. I'm like, do that. It is the best. like, I always feel better, like, five minutes on the peloton, I feel better. 20 minutes on the peloton, I feel better, but an hour, I'm flying. I'm like bro, I just I just went like 10 miles in my apartment. like, I'm on one. Like my treadmill stutters, but my pelotone is mway, what the fuck was I saying? Oh, EDC? Also, well, as long as they don't sell out the VIP anymore, but I doubt that, if the whole thing is sold out, like, like you can upgrade two VIP when you g

Early voting in Virginia's 2025 primary kicks off on May 2. In other news: Hanover County honors its local integration history, some Virginians have automatic state+federal tax extensions — and more Central Virginia news.    VPM's Spring 2025 membership campaign ends on April 18. Right now, several challenges are ongoing that can double your support of our mission. Click or tap here to learn more.    In the podcast: Both the state and federal tax deadlines are May 1 — for some Virginia localities. 

Welcome back to the Jake & Gino Podcast! In this episode, we talk with Pete Neubig, co-founder and CEO of VPM Solutions, about his entrepreneurial journey through real estate, property management, and the virtual workforce.Pete shares how he went from IT professional to real estate investor to scaling a property management company with nearly 1,000 single-family homes. Now, with VPM Solutions, Pete is helping real estate professionals optimize their operations with highly-skilled virtual assistants worldwide.If you want to know how to build a successful property management business, avoid costly mistakes, and leverage virtual teams effectively, this episode is for you.In This Episode, We Cover:How Pete transitioned from corporate IT to real estate successLessons from signing a $1.2M loan personally—and the falloutHow to scale a property management business efficientlyCommon mistakes investors make when scaling operationsWhy virtual team members are a game-changer for property managersGuest: Pete Neubig, CEO of VPM SolutionsLearn More: vpmsolutions.comAbout Us:The Jake & Gino Podcast brings you expert insights into real estate investing, entrepreneurship, and personal growth. Tune in for candid conversations, industry secrets, and actionable advice.Learn More About Us: jakeandgino.com  Chapters:00:00 - Introduction  03:31 - The First Apartment Deal: Signing a $1.2M Loan  16:03 - Founding VPM Solutions and the Management Challenge  18:15 - Buy Right, Manage Right, Finance Right Framework  19:57 - How Property Management Challenges Led to VPM  24:34 - The Decision to Sell: A Shift in Vision  28:47 - VPM Solutions: Addressing Property Management Needs  33:38 - How VPM Solutions Works and What Makes It Unique  38:05 - What is a Maintenance Coordinator?  44:21 - How to Connect with Pete Neubig and Get Started  44:52 - Gino Wraps it Up   We're here to help create multifamily entrepreneurs... Here's how: Brand New? Start Here: https://jakeandgino.mykajabi.com/free-wheelbarrowprofits Want To Get Into Multifamily Real Estate Or Scale Your Current Portfolio Faster? Apply to join our PREMIER MULTIFAMILY INVESTING COMMUNITY & MENTORSHIP PROGRAM. (*Note: Our community is not for beginner investors)

The State Crime Commission has endorsed a piece of legislation relating to Virginia's former chief serologist, whose work at the state crime lab was scrutinized with the VPM podcast Admissible: Shreds of Evidence.    In other news: Virginia's vehicle inspection stickers are changing, Chesterfield County has a new superintendent and Albemarle County has a website for permit applications now.    You can listen to Admissible wherever you get your podcasts.    Today's top audio stories include the latest on Mary Jane Burton's legacy, the federal government's settlement with Perdue Farms over labor violations in the Eastern Shore — and more Central Virginia news.   

Pete Neubig started investing in real estate in 2001, he co-founded Empire property management in 2011 to manage his own properties but soon found himself managing for others.  He sold Empire in 2019 for a seven figure exit and started VPM Solutions in 2020.  VPM is a marketplace that connects the real estate industry with remote staff.. Pete Neubig is a real estate investor who has a great story to share and words of wisdom to impart for both beginning and veteran investors alike, so grab your pen and paper, buckle up and enjoy the ride. Want to get in contact with Pete Neubig? Reach out at .Want to become financially free through commercial real estate? Check out our eBook to learn how to jump start a cash flowing real estate portfolio here https://www.therealestateinvestingclub.com/real-estate-wealth-book  Enjoy the show? Subscribe to the channel for all our upcoming real estate investor interviews and episodes.  ************************************************************************  GET INVOLVED, CONNECTED & GROW YOUR REAL ESTATE BUSINESS  LEARN -- Want to learn the ins and outs of real estate investing? Check out our book at https://www.therealestateinvestingclub.com/real-estate-wealth-book  PARTNER -- Want to partner on a deal or connect in person? Email the host Gabe Petersen at gabe@therealestateinvestingclub.com or reach out on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabe-petersen/  WATCH -- Want to watch our YouTube channel? Click here: https://bit.ly/theREIshow  ************************************************************************   ABOUT THE REAL ESTATE INVESTING CLUB SHOW   Hear from successful real estate investors across every asset class on how they got started investing in real estate and then grew from their first deal to a portfolio of cash-flowing properties. We interview real estate pros from every asset class and learn what strategies they used to create generational wealth for themselves and their families. The REI Club is an interview-based real estate show that will teach you the fastest ways to start and grow your real estate investing career in today's market - from multifamily, to self-storage, to mobile home parks, to mix-use industrial, you'll hear it all! Join us as we delve into our guests career peaks and valleys and the best advice, greatest stories, and favorite tips they learned along the way. Want to create wealth for yourself using the vehicle of real estate? Getting mentorship is the fastest way to success. Get an REI mentor and check out our REI course at https://www.therealestateinvestingclub.com.  #realestateinvesting #passiveincome #realestate   Send us a textInterested in becoming a passive investor in one of our projects? Kaizen Properties, is looking for passive investors for our upcoming deals. We invest in what are known as “recession resistant assets”: self storage, MH & RV parks, and industrial properties. If you are interested, go to the website and click on the “Invest with Us” button at the bottom of the page.Support the show

In today's special episode... it's a Curious Commonwealth! Editor Whittney Evans explores a question the team received that happened to be about the new headquarters VPM is building in Richmond's historic Monroe Ward neighborhood. We'll be back with another special newscast on Friday, Jan. 3. A note: VPM Media Corporation does hold the FCC license for VPM News. This Curious Commonwealth went through the normal editorial process, which means station leadership did not read or hear this piece before we published and aired it. **PS: Submit your Curious Commonwealth questions to us here!**

Today's special episode is three new entries in a yearlong series we've been calling Brown v. Board 70. Within are the stories of two Black Virginians who lived through school segregation, Massive Resistance and eventual school integration. Check out the full series on VPM.org: Yemaja Jubilee: ‘Because my skin was not the right color' Florence Stith-Jackson: 'I was clearing the path for somebody else' New Barbara Johns statue to be unveiled in 2025 Brown v. Board promised better schools for all, but Richmond falls short Prince Edward schools that helped usher in Brown v. Board still in disrepair  Virginia has history of underfunding school construction  We'll be back with another special episode on Monday, Dec. 30.

It's finally here! This week, Michael is joined by Chris Piper, Executive Director of VPAP, and Steve Humble, Chief Content Officer for VPM, who explain how both organizations are partnering to create the next evolution of Pod Virginia...The Virginia Press Room, a weekly round-table podcast bringing news and analysis from journalists across the Commonwealth. Every Monday, Michael will lead journalists on a roundup of stories they've covered the previous week, diving deep into their investigation and previewing what's ahead.For current subscribers to Pod Virginia: no changes needed! Stay subscribed to this podcast feed, and you'll automatically get episodes of The Virginia Press Room when it launches in January 2025.

And tonight, you can listen to VPM's live coverage of the election starting at 7 p.m. You can find our local coverage on VPM PBS, 88.9 FM in Richmond, 89.1 FM in the Northern Neck, 90.1 FM in Southside Virginia and online at VPM.org. 

Also: A little more about the constitutional amendment on Tuesday's ballots, a reminder for college students who wish to vote on Election Day, a fresh spotlight on the 5th Congressional District debate between John McGuire and Gloria Witt — and a look at the 6th Congressional District race from Democrat Ken Mitchell's camp.  Tomorrow night, you can listen to VPM's live coverage of the election starting at 7 p.m. You can find our local coverage on VPM PBS, 88.9 FM in Richmond, 89.1 FM in the Northern Neck, 90.1 FM in Southside Virginia and online at VPM.org. 

The Current State of Podcasting: A Comprehensive GuideIn the latest episode of our podcast, we had the pleasure of hosting Jeff Umbro, the CEO of Podglomerate. Jeff shared his extensive knowledge about the podcasting industry, offering valuable insights into its growth, best practices for independent podcasters, and effective monetization strategies. This blog post will break down the key points discussed in the episode, providing actionable advice and thorough explanations to help you navigate the podcasting landscape.Jeff begins by highlighting the impressive growth of podcasting over the past 16 years. According to the Edison Infinite Dial Report, approximately 132 million people in the U.S. listen to podcasts regularly, averaging about seven shows each month. This growth has been further accelerated by the pandemic, which increased streaming audio consumption. Podglomerate, founded in 2017, is a podcast services company that focuses on producing, marketing, and monetizing podcasts. They work with a diverse range of clients, from large corporations like Netflix and PBS to small businesses and individual creators. Jeff emphasizes that their goal is to help podcasters create high-quality content and effectively reach their target audience.Jeff also discusses the recent consolidation in the podcasting industry, with major players like Spotify, SiriusXM, and Apple acquiring smaller companies. This consolidation has led to a shift in the types of shows being produced, with a growing focus on ad sales and listener engagement. Despite these changes, advertising on podcasts remains highly effective. Jeff notes that podcast ads often outperform other digital mediums, attracting more brands to the space. He emphasizes the importance of creating quality content that resonates with listeners and advises podcasters to focus on engagement metrics such as social media mentions, listener feedback, and overall consumption patterns. For those with limited budgets, Jeff recommends leveraging owned properties like websites, newsletters, and social media to promote their shows and suggests cross-promotion with similar shows as a more effective strategy for audience growth.About Jeff Umbro:Jeff Umbro is the founder and CEO of The Podglomerate, the award-winning company which produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. The Podglomerate is a boot-strapped organization which now works with more than 70 podcasts and more than 30 million monthly podcast downloads. Jeff has written for and been quoted in Bloomberg, Morning Brew, Adweek, Quartz, Hot Pod, Paste, The Daily Dot, and more. Prior to launching the Podglomerate, Jeff had his hands in audience growth and business development for companies like Product Hunt, Serial Box, VotePlz, Talkshow, and Goldberg McDuffie Communications.About Podglomerate:The Podglomerate has been producing, distributing, and monetizing podcasts since 2016. Now representing more than 70 podcasts accounting for over 30 million monthly downloads, The Podglomerate's clients have topped the podcast charts and have received features on every major podcast distribution app and national coverage in print, digital, radio, and television. The Podglomerate has worked with Freakonomics Radio, PBS, NPR, A+E, Lifetime, History Channel, Harvard Business School, MIT, Stanford, Lit Hub Radio, NPR stations (including KPCC/LAist, NHPR, WHYY, WUNC, VPM, WPM, GBH), WNET, Substack, Magnificent Noise, Expedia, Optum, CVS Health, Hubspot, and Hoff Studios, among many others.Apply to be a Guest on The Thoughtful Entrepreneur: https://go.upmyinfluence.com/podcast-guestLinks Mentioned in this Episode:Want to learn more? Check out Podglomerate website athttps://podglomerate.com/Check out Podglomerate...

Richmond is forwarding info on City Council candidate Tavares Floyd to the state inspector general; some Central Virginia early voting locations will be open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday; the Virginia State Crime Commission recommends further, in-depth review of serologist Mary Jane Burton's work — initially reported in the VPM and Story Mechanics podcast Admissible: Shreds of Evidence. Oct. 10–25 is fall pledge season at VPM! Our award-winning work is made possible with your support. Visit vpm.org/donate or vpm.org/challenges for more information.

Plus: UVA Health has resumed elective procedures at three of its locations, the University of Virginia is going to review its actions during the pro-Palestine encampment and Harrisonburg's city council has three open seats this election.  Oct. 10–25 is fall pledge season at VPM! Our award-winning work is made possible with your support. Visit vpm.org/donate or vpm.org/challenges for more information.

Also: Charlottesville and the Salvation Army are collaborating on a new, low-barrier shelter; more Latino and English language-learning students are graduating in Richmond — and more Central Virginia news.  Oct. 10–25 is fall pledge season at VPM! Our award-winning work is made possible with your support. Visit vpm.org/donate or vpm.org/challenges for more information.

Plus: A Richmond City Council candidate has not yet responded to reporting about his campaign finance records, the retiring University of Virginia basketball coach who led the Cavaliers to the 2019 national championship blames the state of college athletics for his departure — and more Central Virginia news. Oct. 10–25 is fall pledge season at VPM! Our award-winning work is made possible with your support. Visit vpm.org/donate or vpm.org/challenges for more information.

MWEB (MimbleWimble Extension Block) is a way to add privacy & extra scalability on a parallel blockchain. First proposed by Andrew Poelstra in 2016, it was quickly forgotten in the Bitcoin world. But thanks to David Burkett, it's now live on Litecoin. Time stamps: Introduction to MWEB and David Burkett (00:00:55) Origins of MWEB (00:01:40) Comparing MWEB to Bitcoin's Taproot (00:02:07) Community Trends in Bitcoin (00:02:32) Historical Context of Litecoin's Privacy Features (00:03:23) Challenges in Development (00:04:09) Explanation of Grin and MWEB (00:05:03) Grin's Adoption Issues (00:09:01) Marek Narozniak's Insights (00:10:06) Relevance of MWEB Today (00:10:48) MWEB vs Grin (00:12:13) Technical Challenges of MWEB Implementation (00:14:23) User Experience in MWEB (00:16:28) Types of Privacy in MWEB (00:18:03) Network Level Privacy (00:18:18) Satoshi's Vision on Privacy (00:19:16) Limitations of MWEB (00:20:05) Sender Privacy Considerations (00:21:07) Combining MWEB and Clear Chain Inputs (00:22:04) Understanding MWEB Pegging (22:05) Privacy Considerations in Transactions (23:02) CoinJoin and MWEB Integration (24:45) Liquidity of Privacy Coins (26:46) Future of Swaps Between Coins (29:24) Drivechains (31:57) Risks of Consensus Changes (35:02) Rebranding MWEB as VPM (37:16) Anonymity vs. Liquidity (38:37)

Today's top audio story is a feature from WHRO in Hampton Roads, where an interfaith nonprofit recently sponsored a voluntary firearm surrender event. It's part of a national project that transforms donated guns into garden tools. Read more about the project at VPM.org! Plus: Here's what you should know about the IV fluid shortage.

In this episode of Working Class Audio, Steve Lack shares his extensive background in audio post-production and podcasting. Steve reflects on his time working with Warner Brothers Discovery and his contributions to iconic shows like Seinfeld. With experience at NPR, VPM, Al Jazeera, and HBO, Steve now operates remotely from Richmond, Virginia. He discusses the flexibility of podcasting and how his journey from network television to podcasting has shaped his approach to building lasting client relationships. In This Episode, We Discuss: Freelancing Journey Shifts Early Adoption Of Pro Tools Discovery Channel Experience Remote Podcast Production Transition From Drumming To Film Composition Midlife Career Pivot Freedom In Podcasting Networking And Relationships Working From A Sailboat Overcoming Corporate Mergers Embracing Technological Changes Matt's Rant: Learning to Swim First Links and Show Notes Steve's Site Acon DeReverberate Accentize Plugins Credits Guest: Steve Lack Host: Matt Boudreau Engineer: Matt Boudreau Producer: Matt Boudreau Editing: Anne-Marie Pleau WCA Theme Music: Cliff Truesdell Announcer: Chuck Smith

In today's episode we talk with new head football coach at Memorial high school in Madison Austin Battaglia. TOPICS COVERED 1- Austin shares how playing multiple sports impacted his want to impact young athletes as a coach and teacher. 2. Austin shares his progression from position coach- to coordinator now to a head coach. 3. We discuss coach Harris stepping down to also impact youth in his way as well as Austin taking over an already stable and successful program. 4. Austin shares his Get Your Edge advice. If you enjoy the podcast please share it with your athletes- teachers- parents and other coaches. Help us grow our GET YOUR EDGE community! #chop-it X @austinthecoach Instagram- @tommyellisen GET YOUR EDGE PODCAST Instagram and X- @getyouredgepod Dean Contact www.foxvalleythrowsclub.com Instagram and Twitter- @foxvalleythrows Brian Contact www.sportsadvantedge.com Instagram- @sportsadvantedge / @brianbott23 X- @botter23 / @sportadvantedgeappleton Email- Brian@sportsadvantedge.com Graphics and Logo- Bailey Marash Instagram and X- @bmarasch13 #foxvalleythrows #getyouredge #sportsadvantedge #hardwork #athlete #makernation #foxvalley #fireit #feedthecats #loadthedawgs #VPM #football

Jayme Swaim, President & CEO of VPM (Virginia Public Media) and the Virginia Foundation for Public Media, recently visited Randy in the studio to discuss the opening of the new VPM studio in the Monroe District of Richmond, VA. Jayme and Randy had a great conversation about the history and future of VPM. You can listen to the interview with Jayme and stay tuned to the Randy Wilson Podcast for more interviews.

A new podcast produced by VPM is focusing on Richmond-area local government and community issues. Rich Meagher, a professor of political science at Randolph-Macon College, hosts RVA's Got Issues — a biweekly show that drops Wednesdays. 

Dating While Gray's Laura Stassi chats with VPM's Morning Edition host Phil Liles.

Mayo Island is now set to become part of the James River Park System; VPM has taken another step forward with its plans to relocate to downtown Richmond; For the second time in recent years, an effort to bring a food hall concept to Scott's Addition has fallen through; and it's out with cider, in with simple syrups for a Shockoe Bottom storefront. 

Owning a property management company can be expensive, risky, and stressful. Property management business owners often surround themselves with the wrong team members. Today, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with Pete Neubig with VPM to talk about building effective and efficient property management teams. You'll Learn [01:58] Having a business in “Chaos Mode” [09:02] The importance of core values [14:45] How VAs help your business thrive [23:18] Accountability, KPIs, and training [30:06] Creating company culture with VAs [37:07] Getting the right people in the right roles [41:30] VAs for property management companies Tweetables “When you're in high growth, you seem to be in chaos mode, and when you're in chaos mode, you don't make any money.” “When you're not proactive in your business and you're reactive, you're losing trust and churn goes up.” “If you don't have your org structure correct, it doesn't matter how many whistles and bells you have.” “I think every business owner needs to build the business around themselves.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Pete: If you don't have your org structure correct, it doesn't matter how many whistles and bells you have. If your org structure is not correct, It all goes to hell in a handbasket.  [00:00:09] Jason: All right. Welcome DoorGrow property managers 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 in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:28] DoorGrow property managers 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, business owners, and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. [00:01:03] I'm your host, property management expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, my wife. Co-owner of DoorGrow and the COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:16] So our guest today, we've got Pete Neubig back on the show with VPM Solutions. Welcome Pete.  [00:01:23] Pete: Welcome Jason, sarah. Thanks for having me.  [00:01:25] Jason: Yeah, good to have you. So now Pete, you were an operator of a property management company.  [00:01:31] Pete: That's correct.  [00:01:32] Jason: With Steve Rosenberg and you really helped to dial in the operations there and build that up. And now you're helping people do this in their property management business with your VA company. So we're going to be chatting about today is the number one way to increase productivity and profitability, so this should be interesting. So Pete, what is the number one way to increase productivity and profitability? Let's get into the subject.  [00:01:57] Pete: Sure. So before I jump right in, I'll talk about just a little brief history of Empire Industries, which was the company that we owned. So, we came from the investor side, Steve and I, we partnered up, we owned about 31 homes. Bought too many, didn't know how to manage it. [00:02:12] We love the idea of buying the deal. We hated the idea of managing it. So we went out looking for management firms and then realized we felt we could build a better mousetrap, which we ended up doing. Our original vision, I know you talk a lot about vision in your coaching, our original vision was we were going to own 500 homes and manage them ourselves, and within a year, that vision went to crap and we ended up managing 60 homes and I owned 37 of them. I'm like, "Steve, how are we managing these other homes?" And we were third-party managing all of a sudden. Because he felt that everybody needed help. And so we started third-party managing. So that's how we got into it, and we ended up building a better mousetrap and we created a third-party management firm and we took it from those 31 doors that we had all class D minus stuff, which is a whole other podcast. And I think you've actually listened to one of yours recently about something like that. So we ended up taking it to about 980 single-family homes and nothing more than four units in Texas, single families, one to four units and we went to three markets. We were in Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth. And what happened was with us, our vision was no longer aligned. Steve wanted to take the property manager firm national. I wanted to literally just stay in Houston and get like 1500 homes. And so that fractured the partnership to the point where we decided to sell the business. Long story short, I couldn't afford to buy him out and he didn't want to buy me out. So we ended up selling to My Management, took a job with them for a couple of years, and realized I was no longer employable and that's when I started VPM Solutions. So that's the short version of it, but we were in chaos mode for many years at Empire. [00:03:43] When you're in high growth, I don't know if you've seen this with your clients, but we were in high growth and when you're in high growth, you seem to be in chaos mode. And when you're in chaos mode, you don't make any money. We didn't anyway. And so what we had found was our number one challenge was payroll costs. So the number one challenge that I've seen, and I've talked to a lot of people across the country, your number one challenge is either growth or payroll costs. The interesting thing about property management because it's a service-based industry and because it's so service-based that you almost have to stress your team out to make money. [00:04:16] Right? So you're on this kind of seesaw where I don't really have that many doors, but I need the people. But so the salary cost is so high that there's no money for me. As I grow the doors. Right. Now I don't hire anybody, but now I'm making money, but my team is now completely stressed out. They work in weekends, they work at nights, they're taking phone calls. They don't give the great customer service. And so payroll costs, what we saw was with us, our payroll costs are about 56%. Which is really high. A business should be around 30 to 36% is what I was taught by my business coach. I don't know if you've seen anything different in the service space, but that's what I've heard. So I had to figure out how to get my payroll cost down from 56% all the way down to about 30%. And I'll tell you how I did it with virtual assistants, so I'll let the cat out of the bag, right? We got it down to about 34%. So from 56 to 34%, and every percentage that you save in payroll costs is a dollar in your pocket. [00:05:11] But then you'd be like, "Well, Pete, if you have less people or, you have less payroll, typically you have less people. And if you have less people, your team is stressed," and I get all that. But let's talk a little bit about what happens when you have a stressed team. Okay. So when you have a stressed team, the little things go out the window, right? [00:05:27] All of a sudden, you're not making those calls to get those online reviews. All of a sudden, you're not making the calls and your communication goes downhill. And when a landlord owner or an owner client calls you to find out what's going on with the problem, whether it's maintenance, lease, you know, lease renewal, whatever it is, they feel like they're managing you. [00:05:43] So when you're not proactive in your business and you're reactive, you're losing trust and churn goes up. At Empire, our churn was around 34%, which is insane, right? The average churn in the business, my understanding is like 18 to 20%. Right.  [00:06:00] Jason: And that's his annual churn.  [00:06:02] Pete: Yeah. So it's high, right? [00:06:03] 34%. And I can tell you that the majority of it was people were unhappy with our service. Yeah. Right. So it wasn't good churn, right? Because you have good, neutral, bad, however you want to define it. We had mainly bad churn. People weren't selling houses and like, "all right, we're out of here, we sold." No, they were taking them because they were not getting the love, the communication really from us. So by having these payroll costs so high, I couldn't afford it. I couldn't afford people. So what happened, especially after 2020 with that pandemic is that the cost of hiring people got incredibly high, right? [00:06:34] So I call them low-level, low enjoyment jobs. Let's take a maintenance coordinator, for example, right? That's the number one job that is posted on VPM solutions today. Is the maintenance coordinator. So that's the first thing people look for typically. Well, a maintenance coordinator in Houston, Texas, back in 2018, 2019, was about a $35,000 a year job. Well, after 2020, people that want to do a job, they want like about $50-55,000, right? And the company just can't absorb that. They can't afford to hire people. On top of that, the type of people that we were getting were GEDs or high school, diplomas, no longer college-educated people wanted that job. Most of those people have challenges in their life and they bring them into your business. So, this all came to a head. I had a lady named Sharon, and Sharon was my front office coordinator. This is back in a day when we had these things called offices and office space. [00:07:22] Jason: Yeah.  [00:07:23] Pete: So I remember those days. In 2019 and before so people would walk into our office, drop off, rant or whatever. Right. And Sharon was this, she was like this angry lady. And I'm like this tells you what my hiring process was back then it was not very good. And some of the things that you teach, I'm like, man, I wish I would have known that back in 18, 17 and 19. So she's the wrong person. She was the wrong person and she was the wrong fit. But in my mind, I'm like, "Well, she's mean." I'm like, "She'd be great for a maintenance coordinator, right? She can tell people no all the time." So I decided instead of firing her, I decided to promote her, right. Which was a terrible mistake. So I promote Sharon to maintenance coordinator. Now, unfortunately for Sharon, she was my maintenance coordinator. I was actually managing properties back then at the time. And so just for that, she probably should've got some hazard pay. So I get that. I'm not the easiest guy to work for, especially when I'm managing properties. So Sharon comes and within one week, Now I gave Sharon a raise, so I moved her from front office to the maintenance coordinator. She was making about $35, I gave her like $ 40,000. [00:08:20] She's making what I think is decent money. That's not great money. I get that, but it was good money at the time. Within one week, she comes to my office. She tells me she needs more money. I'm already just scraping by as the business. Just scraping by, single-digit profit margin. So that's when I realized that I could eliminate her position. I can hire three people that are overseas for the same cost as one Sharon. But here's the big difference. Those three people, they're obviously bilingual, right? And here I'm in Houston and Dallas and Fort Worth at the time, Spanish is like, a lot of our tenants, about a third of them didn't really speak English. A lot of our vendors, Spanish was their first language. So I can get bilingual people, I can get college-educated people, I can get people that are ready or knowing that they want to work from home. And here's the most important thing though. I can get people that were not just a J-O-B to them, but a career and they were excited about the opportunity to work with us and for us. And so the attitude and all of a sudden I can find people that align with our core values.  [00:09:18] Jason: Yeah. That's significant to be able to find people that align with your core values. Yup.  [00:09:22] Pete: A hundred percent. But now I have three people doing the work. So now what happened is I had a little hesitation from my property managers, right? Because property managers are designed to be taskers. Right. So I had to take my property managers and I had to lift them up. And we actually changed the name. We said, you're no longer considered a property manager. You're a client relations specialist. Or an asset manager. I like asset manager better, but that was one of the fights I lost with Rosenberg. If anybody knows Steve, he's 6'4 full of muscles. So we arm wrestled and I lost on that one. We call them client relations specialists.  [00:09:55] Jason: But you wanted to call them what? Asset managers?  [00:09:58] Pete: Asset managers. I think an asset manager just has a little bit more cachet. And if you really think about it, right? How many clients do you have, like you're listening, that call you up and tell you how to manage their property, even though you're the expert? I felt the property manager, I call them gophers. I felt the property manager, they had to take these calls from these owners all the time and say, "Hey, go to my property, make sure the water in the pool is being filled up. Go to my property. Gas man's going to come there. I want to know about this $12 expense." meaningless and small conversations. You would never have those conversations with the guy managing your money, right? Imagine calling your Smith Barney guy and say, "I don't like the way you made this trade. Like you should make this trade different." no, you just let the guy do his thing. So how do you let us do our thing? Well, words are powerful and property manager to me has lost its luster. And it just reminds me of a gopher.  [00:10:45] Jason: I think also the phrase property manager in the property management space has become like saying " miscellaneous role" and that like it doesn't have meaning a lot of times there runs into this a lot with coaching our clients. [00:10:58] Sarah: Like, "what does your property manager do?" And they're like, "they pretty much do everything." "Okay..."  [00:11:02] Pete: And that's a problem And the reason why they do everything is because they can't afford more people because the margin is so slim. Right, so we got to the point where our property managers got elevated, made them client relations specialists. And what does that mean? It means that they had to learn a new skill. They had to manage by reports. They had to manage people because now all of the low level property management tasks were being done by my team in the virtual assistant world. And when I mean everything, but by the time Empire was done now, granted, we're almost a thousand units. But at that point we can hire some people. Everybody had one hat, which was a beautiful thing because now you can have your job description really set. You can have your KPIs really set. You can have your DISC profile really set. And you know who to hire. [00:11:43] And they have one or two numbers and they end up doing a much better job than the manager who's doing all of it. So over the course of your growth, you have to change your infrastructure, right? You go from portfolio to hybrid, hybrid to departmental to pod and all that good stuff. I got to departmental, we never got to pod and then we sold. That was probably going to be the next move for us. [00:12:05] If you don't have your org structure correct, it doesn't matter how many whistles and bells you have. I could have property meld and I can have Zapier and I can have lead simple. I can have all these things. I can have a bunch of VAs, but if your org structure is not correct, It all goes to hell in a handbasket, just even quicker, right? [00:12:22] Cause now you have all this stuff happening even faster and it just gets crazier. And so with us, what we did is we had the structure, right? So now the managers, they're not taking those first phone calls. what was happening, Jason, is that when people would call, right? An owner client would call, my manager would pick up the phone. And as they're talking to this person, they're literally online and doing 14 tasks, responding to 18 emails. And people can hear that, they can see that and they can feel it over the phone. And so what do they do? Well, you don't really have enough time for me, I'm going to go take my property elsewhere. Or if you mess up, you know what, not only do you not have time for me, you mess up, right? So now what we do is we have everything happening on a low level.  [00:13:01] My managers told me, and I've talked to other managers since, my managers told me that maintenance took 80% of their time, right? And so I've heard that time and time again. So that was the first thing. So everybody always asks " okay, if I do hire a virtual assistant what's the first thing I should hire?" And the answer is, it depends for me. I knew my churn rate was directly related to the way we handle me.. I knew it. I didn't have to have a consultant come in and tell me that, right? [00:13:27] I just getting beat up every day by it. So I ended up hiring I was going to hire one remote team member, I ended up hiring four, right? And I trained them, figuring that somebody is going to drop off, but I wanted to train them all together. Now I did the training. Training is like literally the most tedious thing ever. And nobody wants to train. Everybody wants to hire somebody that they know exactly how to do it and they know exactly how to do it your way. It doesn't work that way. You have to take one step back to two steps forward. What people don't realize is the time you spend training your people, you get back in perpetuity forever. Because if you train your people correctly and you have good core values and you have a great culture, they ain't going to leave, right? People are so worried. I'm going to transfer, isn't going to leave. Yeah. If you're running a crappy company. Right. If you're running a crappy company and yeah, I'd be freaking worried too. [00:14:11] Right. Yeah. Make sure you're running a great company. You train the people. And then here's the great thing. As people moved on, whether they moved on and got another job or they moved on because I promoted them, guess who did the training for the next batch? My team did the training for the next batch. By the way, my churn rate for my remote team was way less than my churn rate in my US team. Right. Right. Incredibly different.  [00:14:32] Jason: Churn rate of retaining clients, of team members?  [00:14:36] Pete: Team members. Retaining team members. Churn rate of clients and you have churn rate of team members, right?  [00:14:39] Jason: Yeah. Their loyalty is just a lot stronger because they don't get these kinds of opportunities as often.  [00:14:45] Pete: Correct. Correct. So once my maintenance team was on board, now my manager, I literally saved with the narrow minds 80%, but here's the funny thing, right? So as I'm training. I had a director of operations. Her name was Margo and I still talk to Margo today. I love Margo. She would come to my office every day for 90 days. She came to my office with her cup of coffee every morning and said, "I don't think these VAs are going to work. I don't think these virtual assistants are going to work." Okay. Because when I was training right now, I did the training, not Margo. [00:15:12] I was training them, but when I was training them. What we had to do is every work order had to go to the property manager, then to the virtual assistant, then the virtual assistant would talk to the resident, the owner, bring it back to the property manager because they were getting, they were training, right? So they had to learn what to do in each situation, which caused my property managers more time, right? So that 80 percent went to 90 percent or even a hundred percent or 110. Now they're working extra hours. So they hated it. On day 91 I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I shit you not, day 91, she comes into my office and she has our same cup of coffee and I'm getting ready to listen to the spiel and she goes, " do we have maintenance anymore?" [00:15:47] Yeah. And I laughed and it took 90 days, but I got it. Yeah. The point where, so all of the work orders were being done by the remote team that nothing was getting escalated anymore. Only very little things right? So my managers do say, what do they do? Well, they take on all the escalations. Now imagine. What brain power, right? My team in United States, they were the ones that were the experts, right? So, but imagine if they only are dealing with high level escalations, not all the other little, because how many times did I have all these little things get done, but then we missed the big thing. [00:16:18] And then all of a sudden what happens is I call them taps, two by fours, and mack trucks, right? A tap is basically a maintenance request. That's going unanswered for, let's call it 15 days. Okay. That's a tap. The two by four is now the resident bypass you calls the owner. Now the owner knows that it hadn't happened or the resident blasts you on social. And then the mack truck is the lawsuit that gets across your desk, the tech, the report the complaint to the the real estate commission. Right. Or you're just getting, or you lose a client, right? Yeah. Those are two of those. So my team was so busy that they were missing the taps that they were becoming two by fours. And these are called fires. All right. And all we're doing is trying to deal with this fire. And then of course, every once in a while you get a mack truck, right? And it's what the heck? So now that my managers are not doing the day to day stuff, they're able to be proactive. So they're looking at reports. They're literally looking for taps. And now they're solving those taps. What that means is now the owner clients not calling you to find out what's going on. You're calling them, you're reaching out to them, you're letting them know, or you're taking care of it before they even, before it even becomes an issue. [00:17:18] And so by, by having your high dollar people that are licensed and they have experience by allowing them to not do the low level, low enjoyment stuff they actually became not only do they take all the escalation, but they actually became internal salespeople. All of a sudden, and this is stuff that we didn't anticipate, all of a sudden, though, like my company's name was empire property management in realty. That 90 percent of my customers had no idea that we could buy and sell homes for them. We're called realty and no idea. But once I got my property managers to be client relations specialist, guess what's happening. All of a sudden people are going to buy houses and they're buying them through us. [00:17:54] All of a sudden people want to sell. They want to sell through us. So all of a sudden our revenue goes up, right? Then all of a sudden they're like, who do investors hang out with? They hang out with other investors, right? You're the, you're like the five most, what is it? It's the old saying that you hear you're the average of the five people you hang out the most. All of a sudden they're getting, we're getting referrals. We never got referrals. So now we're getting a bunch of sales. We're getting a bunch of referrals. We're getting people to buy stuff where the agent, right? And when you're the agent, you get, you build that, that relationship. [00:18:18] And so now all of a sudden our churn rate dips down to, I think it was 22 percent from 34%. Right. So the interesting thing is I told you when I first started, right, I went from 54 percent to 34 percent in payroll costs. My payroll actually stayed the same. It was the churn rate that went down, increased my revenue. [00:18:36] It was the other clients, right? And retaining people and getting more clients. That's what, that's where the difference was. And now my managers. We're incredibly happy. They're no longer working nights and weekends. They're no longer stressed. Right now. And so now they are they're having the best life ever. [00:18:53] And my VA team, my remote team, they're making more money than they've ever made before. And it was easy to, and then they all had KPIs and they were all like. People want to inherently do a good job. They do. Right. And so, but they don't know how to do a good job unless you tell them what that looks like. And that's the job description. And they want to report card and that's KPIs. And my team down there, we had them in Mexico cause they're the Spanish speaking. But what happened was again, another thing that we didn't realize was not only the team do the work, they hit the KPIs, they exceeded the KPIs and we create a bonus structure around the KPIs. [00:19:26] So if you hit the KPI, you got a firm handshake. Thank you. Right. But if you exceeded the KPI, you got a bonus. And if you were part of a team, everybody in team added the KPI or you didn't get the bonus. And what I like about with the virtual team is the bonus was a hundred dollars a month. If you hit a certain level, you got a hundred dollars for us wasn't a lot of money, a hundred dollars to somebody in the US. Like literally would get mad at me. That's a little, that's too little of a bonus. It doesn't even fill up my car. Right. And they throw it at you. Somebody in the Philippines or Mexico or Costa Rica it's an extra couple of days of work per month. [00:19:58] So they were really appreciative of that, of the opportunity to make more money. What happened was everybody started exceeding their KPIs to the point where I couldn't make the KPI any more difficult. Like it just is what it is. And they were just doing it. And then here's the magic. [00:20:11] What happened next? was they ended up updating or changing the process. So my deal as the business owner was, I am the policy maker, I make the policy, but you own the process. And when somebody comes in and says, "Hey, I changed the process." And I use this example a lot. I had Jessica who was running all my lease renewals. [00:20:30] So we had about a thousand units and I have one person doing all lease renewals, inspections and lease renewals. Our policy was that you could not do a lease renewal unless an inspection was done, an annual inspection was complete. And we used to start the process 60 days out. Jessica moved it to 90 days out. And when I was talking to them, I'm like, Jessica, I'm just curious what made you, and I don't, I try not to ask why questions because why questions put people blame, excuse, denial below the line and they get defensive. I asked, what made you decide to move it from 60 to 90 days? And she goes, "well, with 90 days, I can do X and Y. Like I can get to the owners faster. I know if the, if the residents do it" and she laid it all out. I'm like, amazing. She was doing a better job than I could have done because that's what her core focus was. Yeah. She was just on that. So then what people will say to me is Pete. [00:21:13] Okay. Well, how do you know she's just not doing the lease renewals and not the inspections because she wants to hit our number. Right. That's the first question I get all the time. And I say, "well, we hire people based on our core values. And one of our core values was integrity. And so if you hire people with integrity, they're not going to do the loop around." [00:21:30] I was able to run reports very quickly that determined all the lease renewals and if they had an inspection done so I've been reporting it. It was very simple to, to make sure that I was, I hold them accountable. Yeah, that's another core value of that we had is we hope people get, we run our business by numbers. [00:21:48] We hold people accountable. And so that's so, so because we did all of that, we were able to solve our challenge of no profit or single digit profit margin to, double digit and eventually get to about that 20 percent profit margin, even though we, even while we were still investing in a lot of money, growing the business. [00:22:07] Jason: Yeah, so we've, I love all the stuff you've been talking about. I think we've had some phenomenal results getting clients to improve their profit margin. And we've got clients easily getting up to 40%. Sarah ran her business over 60 and I think the three biggest profit levers are building a really solid process system, a really solid people system, and a really solid planning system and the planning system we call DoorGrow OS. [00:22:33] But that was really where we started to motivate the team to think in terms of outcomes and get them to think more strategically like business owners. And so that strategic work is what moves businesses forward. That's where they're innovating. That's where they're improving a process and so those kind of goals, if we give a team member an outcome and we say, "figure out however you can best do this, within our values with integrity. Figure out a better way," then I'm not concerned about micromanaging them. I we're less involved in managing the team. They're now managing themselves because they're trying to achieve the outcome. And a lot of team members in a lot of business don't even have job descriptions. So they don't even know what outcomes they're expecting. [00:23:15] Pete: If you're not sure what they're supposed to do. How do they know what they're supposed to do?  [00:23:18] Jason: Right. And if you ask anyone listening to this, if you ask your team members. This would be a curious and interesting experience for you or experiment. Ask your team members, "what are the outcomes that you think are most important for your role?" and compare that with what you think they are. I think you might be surprised. These should be agreed upon and defined, right? That should be in the job descriptions. Pete, I really appreciate all your transparency and sharing, because a lot of times everybody wants to, especially with like coaches in the industry, I see a lot of people coaching mentoring, but you don't get to see how the sausage is made and you don't really hear the challenges they have, but they might be really charismatic. They might really be good at speaking, but there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. And then what a lot of coaches in the industry do is they try to get people to build the business the way they did, which may not even be working. And so I think what's important, I think every business owner needs to build the business around themselves. It needs to be built to allow them the maximum level of fulfillment and freedom and contribution and support in their own business and that fifth reason of safety and certainty. [00:24:25] And that means every business is going to be unique because every business owner is unique. If you started a property management business right now, it would be run very differently than some others, because you're very operationally minded and you would build your team very differently than somebody that's very visionary sales oriented, right? [00:24:41] And I think it's important to get the right team built around you. And a lot of times I think the foundational challenges, a lot of business owners aren't clear on themselves. And then they start building a team and they're miserable. They have an entire team and they're still miserable. They've built the wrong team. [00:24:55] Pete: Well, I think every new business owner does that, right? They don't feel like they deserve good people. So they self sabotage sometimes. Right.  [00:25:04] Jason: They don't believe the good people are out there. A lot of times they just don't even believe there's good people. They're like, "Oh, everybody's terrible." so guess what they attract? Right. And what's surprising the truth is just like you had mentioned, when you find good people, they will exceed you doing that role. Especially if it's one of your minus signs, it's not one of the hats you enjoy wearing, they will be better at it than you, if they enjoy doing it. A hundred percent. And that's super humbling for these early stage entrepreneurs, because they think they're the best at everything initially.  [00:25:33] Pete: There's two thoughts, right? So when you hire somebody, there's the whole abdication of it. And then there's a delegation and then there's the micromanagement. And so, what I find is that when people hire people in the United States, they abdicate a lot of times when they hire people that are remote, they want to micromanage for whatever reason, even though they've invested a lot more money in the person in the United States. Right. And then there's people that just, they just abdicate regardless. [00:25:58] And what I mean by abdication is, I'm a property manager. I'm doing a whole bunch of stuff myself. I hire an assistant and I just throw up on them and say, here's all the things that I'm doing. Go ahead and do it. There's no direction. There's no accountability. There's no management. [00:26:11] Right. And then they get excited. " Oh yeah, I'm a great delegator." No, you're an abdicator. You're not a delegator because you're not giving them the tools and the guidance that's needed. And then what happens is the VA or the person leaves and " well, I don't understand. I can't find any good people, so I'm just going to keep doing it myself." the first thing is when you hire somebody, you have to understand, you just can't just abdicate. You have to make time for them, especially in the first couple of months, right? They're learning you and your culture. At the end of the day, if you are the sole operator and the business owner each one of us have core values, right? We have our personal core values. Most of those are going to be embedded into the company that we built. They should be anyway. You shouldn't change your core values for your company. If I'm full of integrity, I'm not going to create a company that's not, that doesn't have a lot of integrity, right? [00:26:55] So these people are going to learn by you training them or your team training them, right? Core values always get pushed down. If you're listening to this and you do not have core values in your company, you have core values in your company they're just not yours. The team created core values. They push them up and they may or may not be the ones that you want. Right. But when you hire somebody, it's important that you spend a lot of time with them to train them properly so that they understand what they're doing. What I have found is that most jobs can be trained within two to three weeks. Especially if you're wearing one hat. The more, what I call decision points or if then else's, and the biggest one that I've found is in maintenance coordination has a lot of decision points. What if it's over the threshold? What if it's a home warranty? What if it's an emergency? What if it's cosmetic? [00:27:39] Right? You go on and on. That's why it took me 90 days. Because we had to go through every one of those scenarios and I had to train on. And it's just a little bit more in depth. My least renewable person, I was able to train her in two to three weeks. And you're right. And so by the training and by creating the KPIs and then by having a weekly meeting with structure. [00:27:57] Right. So nothing gets me more fired up than having a meeting, just to have a meeting. And then we sit there and we sit there for an hour and I literally just wasted not just my time, but everybody else's time all because we don't have any structure. So I'm a big fan of EOS. I'm sure that you have something that's very similar to a meeting structure. [00:28:15] Jason: We call it DoorGrow OS.  [00:28:16] Pete: DoorGrow OS. So DoorGrow OS. So if you're not part of DoorGrow, join DoorGrow and get on the OS. That's like number one, right? Because if you just get your meetings in order, you will see an increase in productivity just like that. So by the way, the maintenance team that I built, they always reported to me, even when I sold, until the day I sold the company. I just had a soft spot for them. I like maintenance. I know I'm weird that way, but I really did. And so they reported to me. My other team, I had other supervisors. I actually had supervisors in Mexico that were managing the other team members in Mexico. And that supervisor report to somebody in the U. S. or to report directly to me. But I still had my weekly meeting with my team every week. And we had our OS and one of the questions I asked every week, there's two questions that were always number one was always. "What can I do as the business owner to make your job easier?" I think there's a, I think there's a sphere, a circle, right? My job is to take care of my team. My team's job is to take care of the client. The client's job is to take care of the business and the business job is to take care of me. That's the circle right? So no the client is not always right. And let's do what we have to do to make sure that if we did mess up, we want to make it right. And I get all that. But how can I make my team's job easier? And that could be, I need to go talk to Sandy in accounting because she's not doing something or it means, "Hey, can you create this report for me?" I need a whatever it is. What can I do? Then the last question I asked on every meeting was what is your stress level on a scale of one to 10? And this was really important because it does two things. Number one, if somebody is a 10 plus for three weeks in a row, they are ready to punch out. Yeah. No one wants to work in a stressful environment for more than if we can see that Hey, it's summer, we're a little short staffed, you're going to be stressed for next, six to eight weeks, but there's a, but we're going to do X, Y, and Z to get out of it, I get it and people will handle stress for a short period of time. [00:30:05] The second thing is, believe it or not, sometimes people are stressed out and has nothing to do with you or your company. I know we all think it's about us and our company, but personal stuff. So one time I actually. And so if anybody's 10 plus and I want to talk to them, I do it off the meet. Like we have a one on one say, "Hey, stay on everybody else. Get off the meeting, whatever." Yeah. And I had this one lady 10 plus and I said, "Hey you're usually a two what's going on. My brother got hit by a car right now." What this does is everybody's always asking me how how can I, how can I bring my team, my remote team into our culture. This is a great way, right? Because at the end of the day, just like you, you want to give time to your owner clients and you want to build relationships, you want to build relationships with your remote team. And so by, by taking an interest in them as human beings. [00:30:52] Right. It doesn't mean you have to give them, I'm not going to, I didn't fly down and give them a whole bunch of money. I just listened and I cared that her brother was doing okay. I would ask, and it was just an emotional human thing. My team, if your team, if your remote team know that you actually do care about them. So if your remote team knows that you care about them, they're not going to leave you for a 50 cents more or a dollar more an hour. They're just not. Because most of the time, if you're paying them a fair wage. They are making more than enough money to cover their, what I call their nut, just to cover their living expenses. So they're not going to leave because the grass isn't always greener and they are freaking happy. [00:31:28] If you make your team happy by asking them, how can I help? How can I make your job easier? And letting them know that you care about them as people. That's the, that's like a number three question I get, right? Number one is how do I train them? Number two is where do I find them? [00:31:41] Number three is how do I make a part of the team? This is how you make a part of the team, right? By, by advocating and just throwing a bunch of throwing a bunch of stuff on them and letting them go. That's not how you do it. And by micromanaging, I'm saying, I want to see all the screenshots. I want you to write down everything you did from this time to this time. [00:31:57] And if you take a 15 minute break, I need you to punch out and punch in. Right. You said it earlier. You manage by results. That's what I do. Do I care if you put 40 hours a weekend? I really don't. I'll pay you for 40. But if you get if if you're available and I need you, right. So I have managed on availability first, it had to be available. [00:32:16] So we have policy. We use Slack. If I Slack you, you Slack me back within 30 minutes. If I email you, you email me back within four hours. If we have a meeting, you're on video and you're in your home office. None of this Starbucks crap, none of this on the beach crap, like you're in your home office, you're working, right? [00:32:30] So availability is number one. Then number two is KPIs. Are you meeting or exceeding your KPIs? Number three, and if I have the right KPIs, I can just look and if it's green, I know that position is doing well. And then number three is escalations. Am I getting calls from our clients or from internal members of the company saying that you're not, that you can't, that you're not doing your job or you're not getting back to them or whatever. [00:32:53] Those are the three things I need to know. I don't need to know that you're moving your mouse every 30 seconds. I could care less on that. If I got those three things, I know, and again, I know I have the right people because I hired them based on my core values or the company's core values. [00:33:06] Jason: Yeah, totally. We do a lot of the similar things at DoorGrow. Like one of my mentors would say, cadence is culture. And I really believe that the cadence of your meetings creates the culture. It really does. And this is where you're able to set the culture with your team. And we ask questions like, where are you stuck? How can we support you? We do caught being awesome. We, and I think what team members really want more than money, a lot of entrepreneurs, we like money, right? We don't hate money. And so we assume mistakenly that's the highest priority for all of our team members. Well, I'll just give them bonuses or I'll pay them more. The reality is most team members. With the exception of maybe entrepreneurs and salespeople, most everybody else on the planet would prefer once their basic needs are met, financially would prefer to be recognized rather than get a bonus. And so creating the right cadence and creating a system like DoorGrow OS allows the team to be seen and recognized for their accomplishments strategically and moving the business forward. [00:34:03] And that prioritizes that we find that if you can get those three systems in place. The planning system, that's DoorGrow OS here at DoorGrow. The people system, we've got DoorGrow Hiring, Applicant Tracking System, etc. And the process system, we've got DoorGrow Flow and some other stuff. If you have these three systems in place, these are three of the biggest profit levers you can get in place. [00:34:23] And a lot of times people try to skip those three and jump right into profitability and micromanage through just more severe actions, more severe KPIs, and trying to control more. Thinking they can squeeze more blood from the stone when if they did these three profit levers, we've got clients that are hitting amazing profit margins. [00:34:42] They don't even have KPIs because they don't even need them because they trust their team members so much and their team members are really great culture fits and really motivated. And so focus on those three profit levers first, and you're going to make a lot more money. And really what happens is you get three times the output from good team members. [00:34:59] Easily and they can be anywhere. And what's, what I love about being able to have a remote team, we've got team members all over the place. Some of the U S Canada, Mexico, one's in London now, Philippines. I'm able to hire the best. I'm able to hire the best, no matter where they are. And I'm able to also for certain roles, get, make sure it's really affordable for the business. [00:35:20] And so we're not, I'm not too particular about where they're at or what they're doing. It just needs to be a price point that we can afford. And I need a really good outcome. And if we can get that, then that's the ideal. And it's easier for me to run things remotely than if everybody were interrupting me coming into my office all day long, it's a lot quieter. [00:35:42] And I feel like everybody's able to get more done, but we're able to create that connection in our daily huddles. We check in with everybody, ask where they're stuck. We do one on ones like you were talking about. All these things to figure out where everybody are at. The one thing that we do that I think is really impactful is we have our team members do time studies, not as a punitive measure, as a way to support them and figure out how to get them additional support and help. [00:36:05] And this is where we figure out which, what are their plus and minus signs. So Adam, who's been on my team for almost, I think almost a decade now. Yeah. I'm like nine years. And he started as a content writer and he's done multiple time studies and every time he gets really honest with me, he's these are the things I don't enjoy doing anymore. [00:36:21] I'm not enjoying doing all this writing. I'm, what do you enjoy? I enjoy interacting with the clients. He now manages our entire department for websites, branding, all this. He's got a whole team under him. Whereas nobody initially would have thought, Hey, Adam is a manager, but he by default naturally became one because we just got him the support he needed. [00:36:40] And so he's been, he, and that's how we've been able to retain Adam. And the cool thing about retaining team members is they're like wine. They get better with time. Better and better. And so Adam knows lots of ins and outs in the business. He's super adaptable and versatile, and we're able to use them for billing related stuff and website stuff. [00:36:58] And there's so many things over time that he's developed and absorbed and learned. He can run significant pieces of the business for me if necessary.  [00:37:07] Pete: Well, I'll give you a funny story because, here I am teaching and telling you, oh, here's how hire people. Right? So when I first started VPM Leon, who is our onboarding guy now came over and he was with me at mind and he was with me at empire. [00:37:20] So I've known Leon and I knew he had our core values, right? And so we're like, maybe eight months in and I go to one of my business partners and I go, "Hey man, I don't think Leon's working out," and he's like, "really?" he did the, I called the Mongolian reversal, right? Because he basically takes my words and he puts them right back at me. [00:37:34] He goes "let me ask you what's his job description?" And it's crickets. So I'm like, "yeah, he don't really have a job description." He's " what's his KPIs?" I'm like, "yeah, we haven't really got to that." So he's like, "how much have you trained him?" And I'm like, "all right, enough." [00:37:45] Basically, Leon was the right guy. I just didn't know what he's supposed to do. So how did he know what he's supposed to do? So then I got serious about the job description. And then what we realized is Leon was running about two hats, maybe three hats. It's really like he, he was good at one of them. [00:38:01] So we ended up hiring another guy, Angelino, and gave that hat away. And now Leon just runs and now he is. Thriving and exceeding all of the metrics that we put in his place. And he's the happiest he's ever been. And even though, this stuff, sometimes you have to continuously, make sure that you're doing it. [00:38:20] Jason: Oh yeah. We had a conversation last night about a team member that we realized they weren't doing some things right. And Sarah put it back in my face. She's well, did you train them on this? And I was like, No, I didn't. I made a mistake in training. I thought they would understand it in my superficial explanation. [00:38:38] And yeah,  [00:38:39] Pete: it's shortcuts, right? Those three things that you put out there, the hiring and the process, it sounds so easy, right? But we know it's tedious. And there's, that's a, that's the reason. Why most entrepreneurs who are most of 'em, are visionaries, right? A lot of guys start business with visionaries. [00:38:53] They're not in the details. They don't like doing that. It's not natural, right? I need an integrator. They need a, they need an integrator. I'm guessing Sarah's the integrator. I'm the integrator. I'm guessing you're the visionary, right? So they need an integrator to, to literally do that stuff and you get, like I said you, when you do it you get it back in perpetuity, like it just, once the system is complete, it's just tweaking. It's not rebuilding, once, and and but a lot of visionaries, they skip that part because they don't like that part. [00:39:18] Yeah. I agree. It's from hire a consultant or hire the, hire somebody that, that likes that stuff.  [00:39:23] Jason: Yeah.  [00:39:24] Sarah: And I love that you just keep like, thank you for continuously driving home the point. Like you have to train people. You have to. And a lot of times what we see is we see doesn't matter your location. [00:39:34] Doesn't matter your size. Doesn't even matter what industry you're in. People hire out of pain, which makes sense, but they're in so much pain that they're like, Oh, they think as soon as they hire somebody, they're like, Oh, like I'm, it's solved. It's not solved yet because you haven't trained them.  [00:39:48] It's still your problem until they are properly trained. And it does take time. So for a period of time, when you hire somebody, your life is going to get worse. You're going to be taking on more if you want them to do a good job That is what has to happen because if you hire somebody and you're like, "here just have it like baptism by fire figure it out go ahead and do it." [00:40:09] It's not going to work out. You're going to be frustrated They're going to be frustrated and it looks bad for both people and then you guys are both frustrated at each other and you're like Why are they not working out? And this person is like I didn't even get training. I don't like you're mad at me all the time. [00:40:22] And I just I don't even know what to do, but you didn't tell me what to do. Help me.  [00:40:25] Pete: I'm not going to hire people because I just, there's no good people out there. Right. It's just, when I was telling you that story about training the maintenance team, I was trained about two hours a day on the maintenance, which is a little too much, probably an hour and a half is probably the maximum we can take. [00:40:37] But I was doing two hours. That didn't mean that my 10 hour day. was still a 10 hour day. It became a 12 hour day because I still had 10 hours of work. I had to do, I just took on more, two hours of training. And a lot of times they ask more, a lot of times it's even more than that because as you're training, what I have found, and maybe you guys see the same thing is as I'm training, I actually learned a lot more about my processes and about my company, and then I realized, oh. [00:41:00] There's no policy here. Oh, there's no field for that. Oh, that's just in my head. However, I feel that day I'm going to, I'm going to judge on that. And so I, there was a lot of work that I ended up having to do as I'm creating the, to training, oh man, this process is not exactly at all what I thought. [00:41:16] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, Pete, this has been an awesome conversation. We appreciate you coming on the show. Why don't you tell everybody just a little bit about VPM solutions. Do a quick plug and how they can reach out and connect with you.  [00:41:30] Pete: Yeah. So, thanks for that. So VPM solutions is an online platform that connects property management companies with remote team members. [00:41:38] It's a direct hire, so they don't work for VPM. They work directly for you. You negotiate the hourly rate. There is no upfront cost and there's no fee to use the site. So it's all free for the company managers. The way VPM makes money is the virtual assistant. Pays 10%. So when they apply to a job, they have a breakdown of this is how much hourly rate that I'm applying for. [00:41:59] It is how much that BPM charges a platform fee. And this is how much that I'll get. We also have about 20, I think 23 free training. So, there's training on the site from fair housing to marketing, social media, to pro we have a flagship property manager, one on one courses. It's about nine 12, 12 courses, nine hours of content. [00:42:20] Wow. And it's there just to teach folks the basics of property management. No, you're not going to hire them and they're going to be able to run and be a property manager for you, but they're going to know the ins and outs of the verbiage of just the life cycle, like high level stuff. But it's our attempt to get people trained up so that when you, so that when you get them, they're not like that, at least they're crawling. [00:42:44] Right. Yeah. They have a little bit of deal, a little bit of information. And then we also have we also have some free resources that are on the side as well. Like we have I think we have 50 job descriptions with this profiles that we assume, assume assumptive this profiles. [00:43:00] We also have like org charts, like what you should, or chart should be as you grow your business. And then we also have just a list of all the vendors and resources and all the different Facebook groups and all of the conferences that are out there for profit management. [00:43:13] Matter of fact, you're actually on that site by the way, as a vendor. So, yeah. So. That's what we do. And then we also offer what we call the white glove service. It's a free service that helps you go through the hiring process. Because we, what we realized early on, it's a do it yourself platform, but what we realize is most people don't have a hiring process and no idea what to do. [00:43:34] So we guide them. Now your team your clients probably have a good hiring process, but we'll offer, like we'll offer that free white glove service to them as well, if they want to come in and just. Need a little bit of help. What should they ask before they interview? There's some red tape. [00:43:47] Like we say, you get a disc profile, and then the, we have these courses that they take, they get certifications, you can search based on those certifications. So it's really the only platform literally built for property management.  [00:43:57] Jason: Love it. Yeah. Very cool. We'll check it out. So everybody make sure you check out Pete Neubig's VPM solutions. [00:44:04] Take a look at that. And Pete, thanks for being on the show today. It's good conversation.  [00:44:08] Pete: Yeah. Thanks guys. Thanks Jason. Thanks Sarah. Appreciate you.  [00:44:11] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur, you're wanting to grow or add more doors or you're struggling with dealing with your team, reach out to us at DoorGrow. [00:44:19] We can help you with this. We do this all the time. We would love to support you. We have clients that are easily going from, we can help you scale anywhere from zero to a thousand plus, and anybody can do this in the next three to five years. We would love to support you, help you scale your business and help you save collapse a lot of time and not have to go through a make. [00:44:37] So many mistakes in your business. And so until next time to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:44:42] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:45:09] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

More money is being funneled into Virginia's problem gambling services, but advocates say increased gambling demands more resources for help. Virginia ranked near the bottom of all states in the amount of money directed toward problem gambling before casino and sports betting were legalized. The Problem Gambling Treatment and Support fund was created in 2020 when gambling expanded in Virginia. Collection of revenues into the fund began in January 2021. Before 2021, the Virginia Lottery directed approximately ,000 annually to the fund, according to VPM. Casinos are now required to put .8% of a statutory tax into casino adjusted gross...Article LinkSupport the show

LINKS:Sponsor: Early Impact VirginiaLearn more about Jackleg MediaThis week, Michael is joined by VPM's Jahd Khalil to break down some of the biggest takeaways from the Democrats' big win on Tuesday. With Don Scott now set to be the Speaker of the House, what will his leadership look like? How will new representatives work across the aisle? What can we learn from local results like Richmond's second denial of a casino? And who will become the new Senate Majority Leader?

Good morning, RVA! It's 54 °F, and, today, summerish temperatures return! Expect highs in the 80s this afternoon and for them to stretch on through next week. Are these record highs? Probably! Am I recovering from a fall cold? Yes! Will I still try to get out into the forest on my bicycle despite probably needing to rest? We'll see! Water cooler Remember last year when the Governor wanted to create permanent tax cuts for the wealthy but didn't have the votes and settled instead for one-time rebates, $200 for individuals and $400 for families? Well, the Department of Taxation has set up a website to check if you're eligible for those rebates (you gotta create an account first), and says the checks should hit your mailbox before December. The Cynical Part of Me raises an eyebrow at the near-election timing of this launch. The Regular Part of Me knows that the General Assembly just passed its budget a hot second ago and casual-sounding things like “setting up a website to check if you're eligible” are actually huge projects for already overworked teams. Looking ahead, and given all the press releases I get from Youngkin's team about the Commonwealth's surging revenue, I'd guess those permanent tax cuts for the wealthy will make a return in this coming year's budget, too. Just another reason why the November 7th election—in just 12 days!—is so very important. Make sure you've got a plan to vote, OK? In other state government news, Ben Paviour at VPM reports on the ongoing mess at the Department of Elections and their decision to remove thousands of folks from the voter rolls. It's hard to tell what's actually going on here, and I'd argue that's probably part of the point. Skip the confusion, and tap straight on through to the Department of Elections website to check your voter registration status right now. Also at VPM, Jahd Khalil writes about Republicans' plans to ban abortion should they win control of the General Assembly next month (see above about voting!). Khalil links to this recent survey by CNU's Wason Center, which asked potential voters a bunch of questions about their Top Issues heading into this election. Tap through and dig into the data, because it's fascinating. While folks support a handful of liberal issues—like keeping abortion legal, teaching kids about racism in public schools, retail marijuana sales, and not banning books—they're basically split on whether they'll vote for a Democrat or a Republican. Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams has more on the survey results, including this bit: “When likely voters were asked who they trusted most to make the right decisions for children in K-12 public schools, 81% of respondents trusted teachers “somewhat” or “a lot” — more so than school administrators (67%), local school boards (59%) and state government (55%). That's right: teachers were deemed more trustworthy than the school boards micromanaging education.” Standard caveats apply about how do surveys even work in a world where no one answers their phone, but still, fascinating! It's not all just state-level elections popping up on ballots, some of us get to vote for local candidates, too. If you're a Henrico resident cast your web browsers back over to the RTD where Sean Jones has put together a nice overview of the 10 candidates running for the Board of Supervisors. Eileen Mellon at Richmond Magazine sat down with Nathan Hughes, a real estate agent who's worked with local restauranteurs for decades, to talk about cursed restaurant spots. Hughes tries to explain that actual things—like location, foot traffic, and layout—probably contribute more to a restaurant's success than fake things like curses. Likely story, Hughes! Reminder: Breakaway RVA will host their final chill, informative, and fun group bike ride tonight. Meet at Scuffletown Park at 5:45 PM, wheels up at 6:00 PM! Tonight, at 6:00 PM, the YWCA host the 27th annual Remember My Name memorial at Cedar Street Baptist Church (2301 Cedar Street). This memorial gives friends, family, and community members a chance to commemorate those who have lost their lives due to domestic violence and intimate partner violence. According to the YWCA, “nearly one-third of all homicides in Virginia are attributed to domestic or intimate partner violence.” You can learn more and register (to help with the headcount) over on the website. This morning's longread Naked beneath Our Clothes I loved this essay on nakedness and bodies and how we're so weird about both. Everyone's got a body, and we've done a lot of really gross societal work to make sure we've all got thoughts on those bodies—the ones that belong to other people, sure, but mostly the one that belongs to us. Seeing other naked bodies, though, did not make me feel disrespectful. It was wondrous. The shared ease made being human more palatable. And I soon realized there is nothing exhibitionist about being naked. People look you in the eye; nobody stares at the rest of you. Nothing is new, shocking, revelatory. All the lumps and bumps, moles and birthmarks, scars and stretch marks are on display, and the need to conceal your own drops away. Nakedness, done right, has no ego. There are problems with exposing the body, of course, but there are also problems in cultures that conceal. The more artfully we cover our bodies, the more mystique there is. But the more mystique there is, the greater the desire to own, steal, guard, or violate that alluring, luring, concealed body. The paradox is built in. If you'd like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol' Patreon. Picture of the Day These mushrooms understand dense housing.

The tour makes a virtual stop in Richmond, where host Gloria Riviera learns how the community has built a public-private partnership to help subsidize a mixed-delivery model of care that helps families find programs tailored to their specific needs. This week we meet Cheryl Morman, a family child care provider and president of the Virginia Alliance for Family Child Care Association; J David Young, executive director of FRIENDS Association for Children; and Jodi Roberts, the director of early childhood development at Thrive Birth to Five. Find out how this partnership improved outcomes for children, increased access for disadvantaged populations, and found unique ways to help improve educator pay. Plus, we hear about the important role Thrive Birth to Five plays in making these programs work. Show Notes Presented by Neighborhood Villages. Neighborhood Villages is a Massachusetts-based systems change non-profit. It envisions a transformed, equitable early childhood education system that lifts up educators and sets every child and family up to thrive. In pursuit of this vision, Neighborhood Villages designs, evaluates, and scales innovative solutions to the biggest challenges faced by early childhood education providers and the children and families who rely on them, and drives policy reform through advocacy, education, and research. This season was made possible with generous support from Imaginable Futures, a global philanthropic investment firm working with partners to build more healthy and equitable systems, so that everyone has the opportunity to learn and realize the future they imagine. Learn more at www.imaginablefutures.com This episode of No One is Coming to Save Us is made possible with support from Robins Foundation and VPM. Robins Foundation envisions a vibrant and unified Richmond, in which our children are prepared for bright futures, our communities are culturally enriched, and our region grows as a positive and dynamic place to live. To learn more, visit www.robinsfdn.org.  As Virginia's home for public media, VPM connects nearly 2 million people across Central Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley to insightful programming in arts and culture, history, science, news, and education.  VPM's mission is to use the power of media to educate, entertain, and inspire. VPM's department of Early Childhood Care & Education is guided by VPM's mission.  We are committed to working towards ensuring equitable learning opportunities for all families in our community and advancing equity in Early Childhood Education. To learn more, visit www.vpm.org  Special thank you to VPM, and to the Institute for Contemporary Art for hosting our No One is Coming To Save Us watch party.  Laugh, cry, be outraged, and hear solutions! Join our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nooneiscomingtosaveus.  Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.  Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows: https://lemonadamedia.com/sponsors/. Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.  For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Virginia crime lab's director says she's looking into allegations of misconduct there beginning in the 1970s. The lab's actions follow the release of the VPM podcast Admissible: Shreds of Evidence. 

Today Jeannine speaks with Moira Kucaba. Moira is an alcoholic, addict, bulimic, and college dropout turned self-made millionaire and expert in helping people find their extraordinary.For the last 25 years, Moira has obsessively studied ancient teachings, current day thought leaders, and everything in between. Her signature VPM method combines manifestation techniques rooted in neuroscience with actionable goals. She takes the woo out of manifesting and combines ancient tools with neuroscience backed strategies. As a struggling addict turned 7 figure CEO, she is here to show you how to turn your failures into success. Through the power of vision, manifestation, and a solid dose of accountability, she accomplished more in 365 days than she had in her entire life & she became the #1 coach in a billion dollar company. Today, she teaches people how to 10X their lives and transform their minds through her courses, speaking engagements, and coaching business. Instagram Connect with Chasing Heroine on Instagram Connect with Chasing Heroine on TikTok --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jeannine-coulter-lindgren/message

Former governor Doug Wilder said he isn't satisfied with the results that came back last week of a VCU-driven review into VCU Health's ill-fated and costly downtown development deal; Buc-ee's has purchased nearly 28 acres in New Kent County, where it's planning its first store in state; and after nearly 60 years on Sesame Street, VPM will soon be on its way to downtown Richmond.

The RMR Podcast: Music, Cannabis, and Marketing Welcome to episode 69 of the RMR Podcast, Mitch Pfeifer is joined by Nathan Kies of Vape Dept. Nathan is currently the CEO of Vape Dept and previously founded VPM.com. His vast experience in the vape industry spans over a decade that started from selling on Craigslist and eBay to building multiple e-com businesses in the verticle. Today we talk about the current state of the vape hardware market, the rise of disposables, and building a company in the cannabis industry. More at www.respectmyregion.com

 Today's episode, “From Addict to CEO,” features my guest Moira Kucaba. Moira is an Elite Fitness + Business Coach, Bestselling Author, Speaker, Mama, Belief Builder, and Addiction Overcomer. For 25 years, Moira has obsessively studied ancient teachings, modern thought leaders, and everything in between. Her signature VPM method combines manifestation techniques rooted in neuroscience with actionable goals. She removes the woo from manifesting and combines ancient tools with neuroscience-backed strategies. As a struggling addict turned 7-figure CEO, she is here to show you how to turn your failures into success through the power of vision, manifestation, and a solid dose of accountability. Moira teaches people how to transform their minds through her courses, speaking engagements, and coaching business.In this episode, Ken Joslin unpacks Moira's journey from network marketing to becoming a coach and author and the importance of serving and helping others unlock their potential. She shares her story of addiction and the rock bottom moment that led her to seek recovery. Moira discusses the pressure she felt growing up as the "golden child" and how her addiction resulted from her perfectionism personality. She also reflects on the moment of clarity that helped her take ownership. Moira emphasizes that her addiction journey, though difficult, also allowed her to succeed in business and serve others at a high level. Connect with Moira on Instagram or at her website moirakucaba.com.  If you enjoyed this episode, please share it on social media and tag Ken Joslin.

Good morning, RVA! It's 30 °F, and today looks warmer and, thankfully, less windy than yesterday. You can expect highs in the mid 50s and the start of a nice little warm streak—temperatures tomorrow and Friday will end up in the mid 60s! Water cooler OK! I got Council's budget work session from this past Monday up on the Boring Show and you can listen here. I think if you're only planning on listening to one single budget session (gasp! scoff!), this is the one I would pick for you. CAO Lincoln Saunders put together a really nice presentation overviewing both the operating and capital budgets and did a great job of explaining the Mayor's priority investments. One graphic which caught the praise of several councilmembers was this one breaking the operating budget down into percentages and representing it as “cents out of every dollar.” So, for example, out of every dollar in the City's budget, $0.23 goes towards education, $0.20 goes towards public safety, $.04 towards recreation and culture, and so on. I also heard tell of a “Budget in Brief” document that I want to get my hands on and add to my PDF library. As for notable topics, I think the discussions on assessments, gun violence, and housing are worth a listen. Especially the latter, as the CAO explains why the Mayor decided to fund affordable housing outside of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (mostly due to restrictions on how ARPA dollars can be spent). I'd love some smart housing person to dig into this new funding plan from the City and let us all know their thoughts and feelings. Jahd Khalil at VPM details a few of the open questions. Anyway, the budget is important stuff and listening to this work session while you do the dishes or fold the laundry will make you a better citizen—plus, at 2x speed it'll only take you about an hour to get through! Richmond BizSense's Mike Platania reports that City Council has given final final for real approval to a new restaurant in Byrd Park on the corner of Idlewood and Stafford. This is great news, because the folks behind the new spot (who also run New York Deli) have worked to bring a restaurant to that location for literal years! Because a restaurant is not an allowed use under the building's current zoning, City Council had to pass an entire ordinance just for this one single property via its Special Use Permit process. That process gives incredible power to, as Platania puts it, a “handful of local residents opposed to the project”, who, with a little organizing, can completely derail or delay something that probably should be allowed by right. The amount of SUPs on Council's agenda each and every week is why zoning is so important and why the City's rewrite of its zoning ordinance is such a huge deal. With the rewrite, we've got the opportunity to start mixing our neighborhood uses together—residential right next to retail! It's how the rest of the world does it, and I bet if folks take a second to think of their favorite places, they are almost certainly neighborhoods where you can walk across the street to something cool—something like a chill corner cafe! Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams writes about a school-name switcheroo pulled by the Hanover County School Board. That County will soon consolidate Henry Clay and John M. Gandy elementary schools, and, back in 2018, the plan was to consolidate the name, too, to just “John M. Gandy.” It was an important decision, because, as MPW writes, the original Gandy “opened in 1950 to accommodate Black Hanover County students during a school segregation era that was long on ‘separate' but short on ‘equal'...The school — named for a longtime Virginia State University president — was the first in Hanover to provide Black students with central heating and indoor plumbing.” Now Hanover's School Board will backtrack on their decision and establish a committee to make naming recommendations for the new consolidated school. To quote MPW again: “Hanover has become the place where consensus goes to die.” Tonight, at 6:00 PM, the Community Foundation for a Greater Richmond and the University of Richmond are hosting a virtual panel exploring “important insights and possible action steps around regional planning for our port and highways, as well as local projects to improve bus routes and bike lanes.” Of course, my actions steps for highways would be “spend less money on highways,” but the other stuff sounds interesting. Panelists include folks from the City, Henrico County, GRTC, Bike Walk RVA, and a reporter—I think you'll recognize a lot of the names! The event is free, but you should register online to get the Zoom link. This morning's longread Miscellany № 99: minting the dollar I found a blog about punctuation, and it is lovely. Like most towns that host a cen­tur­ies-old uni­versity, St An­drews boasts and/or suf­fers eye-wa­ter­ing hous­ing costs, sticky-floored bars be­loved by stu­dents and loathed by loc­als, and at least one quirky, age­less book­shop that looks like it has es­caped from a Terry Pratch­ett novel. Cam­bridge has The Haunted Book­shop; Ox­ford has St Philip's Books; Ed­in­burgh has Arm­chair Books. We came across a fant­astic ex­ample in St An­drews in the form of J&G Innes on South Street, one of the town's main shop­ping streets...But at least as in­ter­est­ing as the shop's com­mer­cial and ar­chi­tec­tural his­tory is this sign above the door: “Here stood the house of BAILIE BELL, who, be­fore 1744, was an eager co-worker with Al­ex­an­der Wilson, the father of Scot­tish type-found­ing, and JOHN BAINE in whose type-foundry in Phil­adelphia the first $ sign was cast in 1797.” If you'd like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol' Patreon. Picture of the Day I'm mad about how the State ruined an entire block of Broad Street and doesn't even really care.

PolitiFact Editor Warrne Fiske looks at claims that President Biden is planning to send the IRS after middle-class Americans; US Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke to VPM about plans to reduce traffic fatalities; Senator Tim Kaine finally announced his plans to run for a third term; and other local news stories.

What is the best way to save money and add incredible and professional members to your team? Property managers everywhere are trying to increase their revenue, but many overlook a simple solution; virtual team members. Pete Neubig joins us in today's episode. Pete brings his background and experience providing us with a unique insight into understanding how these highly skilled professionals can save you both time and money!When you are ready for the experts to help you maximize your real estate investment portfolio, contact Revolution Management!For more on Pete Neubig and VPM solutions: www.vpmsolutions.com

The LahPai family's arrival to Virginia from Myanmar was highly anticipated: the local resettlement agency prepped their home; the local religious community was ready to provide support; the family's U.S connection lived just minutes down the street. Even with these support systems, resettlement was (and still is) not a straightforward, clean-cut process. Why is that? In this debut episode from Resettled — a series by Virginia Public Media about the real experiences of refugees after they arrive to the U.S. — you'll meet the people helping the LahPais during their early days of resettlement... and explore some of the unexpected difficulties that arise when moving to a new country, a new culture and a new life. Episode Credits: Resettled is a production of VPM Produced by Gilda di Carli and edited by Kelly Jones, with oversight from Angela Massino and Nate Tobey Hosted by Ahmed Badr Production management by Gavin Wright Steve Humble is VPM's Chief Content Officer Music for this episode by Sandhill and Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks from VPM: Thanks to Catherine Komp, Zar Wahidi, Yasmine Jumaa and interns Safiya Ahmed and Helen Zein Eddine, along with the folks at NPR's Story Lab for helping kickstart the podcast. Thanks to Leslie Bretz, Louise Keeton and Michael Hayes for web and digital support. More photos and stories available at vpm.org/resettled.

Happy New Year! I hope today you are feeling refreshed, renewed, and excited for what's to come for you in this New Year. You are in for a treat and truly I think today's episode couldn't fit the timing more perfectly to kick off this New Year. My guest today is a new dear friend that has truly become a powerful inspiration for myself and I know is for so many. So if you have big goals this year and you are wanting to go all in on the dream that has been placed on your heart. This episode will serve you well.  I welcome my guest, Moira Kucaba is an Elite Fitness + Business Coach, Self-taught CEO, Bestselling Author, Speaker, Mom, Belief Builder and Addiction Overcomer helping others pave their way to success. For the last 25 years, Moira has obsessively studied ancient teachings, current day thought leaders, and everything in between. Her signature VPM method combines manifestation techniques rooted in neuroscience with actionable goals. She takes the woo out of manifesting and combines ancient tools with neuroscience backed strategies.  As a struggling addict turned 7 figure CEO, she is here to show you how to turn your failures into success. Through the power of vision, manifestation, and a solid dose of accountability, she accomplished more in 365 days than she had in her entire life & she became the #1 coach in a 350 million company. Today, she teaches people how to 10X their lives and transform their minds through her courses, speaking engagements, and coaching business. In this episode you will learn: How to become more resourceful and look at opportunities, opposed to obstacles Why your personal growth will help your success How to have the confidence to move forward in faith over fear How to better manage your time Why our identity can sabotage our success and more or full show notes and episode resources head to: https://ericalippy.com/moira-kucaba/ Find our guest at: Moira Kucaba | Website,  Instagram ,Facebook Moira Kucaba YouTube Channel Moira's Book + Planner Low Bottom/High Rise Podcast Follow me on Social Media: Your Host: @ericalippy Podcast: @passionlovepursuit Facebook YouTube PASSION LOVE PURSUIT PODCASTS: https://ericalippy.com/the-podcast/

Good morning, RVA! It's 53 °F, and today, after the wet weather moves through, looks like our warmest day of the week. Expect highs in the 60s to go along with a small possibility of rain this morning. I think, after today, we might get enough rain-free days to dry out our soggy landscapes! P.S. You are not imagining it: Karri Peifer at Axios Richmond reports that our average winter temperatures are four degrees warmer than in the 1970s. Water cooler Big news from RPS Superintendent Kamras's daily email: The school district has hired a new Chief Wellness Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Both internal hires, Renesha Parks (previously the Director of Exceptional Education) will serve as the CWO, while Dana Fox (the Director of School Construction) will take over at COO. Congratulations to these bold, brave women who step into important and complicated roles. We'll see what the future holds for them, because I was pretty convinced that the School Board would pull some shenanigans to keep these positions open even longer. Jahd Khalil at VPM reports that the Mayor's administration has finalized the total amount of revenue collected from the City's real estate tax, which clocks in at $21 million over their original estimate. Most of the additional cash will help pay for inclement weather shelters and additional raises for police, fire, and emergency communications staff. Quick aside about the latter: “A press release from the mayor's office said those pay adjustments would be for employees not accounted for in a $17 million increase in first-responder wages in May's budget.” This sort of “Ope! We found more money!” happens every year to some extent, so you shouldn't be too scandalized by this reporting—but it's clearly not the best way to run things. Would last year's budget process have gone any differently with an additional $17 million hanging around? No clue, but it'd be nice to have all the money on the table before we head into budget season. That's why (I think), when the Mayor introduced his plan to issue real estate tax rebates, an additional piece of the assessments puzzle was to “align the city's assessment and budget cycles.” Theoretically that administrative shift might could fix these sorts of year-end money influxes. Richmond BizSense's Jonathan Spiers has some great reporting on the draft details of Those Thee Zoning Changes, specifically the proposed changes to the City's Airbnb regulations: “the recommendations would eliminate a primary residency requirement in which operators must reside at the property being rented for at least half the year. Instead, [Short-Term Rentals] would be permissible in any dwelling in any of the city's zoning districts, but with a distance requirement separating the unit from another STR at a non-primary residence.” This is a hard sentence for my brain to understand, but, I think the intent here is to allow landlords to run multiple Airbnbs but prevent them from buying up entire blocks of housing to use as short-term rentals. This is, of course, anti-housing and will reduce the amount of housing stock in Richmond, but I think it is a compromise I'd be willing to trade for permitting by-right Accessory Dwelling Units everywhere and the entire elimination of parking minimums (the other two zoning changes). You can flip through the City's presentation on these changes here and you can leave a public comment here. We all know the A.P. Hill monument at Hermitage and Laburnum is horrible, creates one of the most dangerous intersections in the city, and will, at some point, come down. When, though? I've been pretty wait-and-see, since legal challenges tend to take forever to lawyer their way through the system, but it does feel like we're getting close. NBC12's Henry Graff reports that the statue could come down as early as next week. Exciting! This morning's longread How Apples Are Ranked I'm almost positive I've linked to this apple guy before, but now he's got his own, very thorough, very funny apple ranking site. Yes, it's mostly a joke, but it's also entirely a real apple ranking site. Thankfully in the early 2000s, due to the emergence of a class of idle yuppies willing to shell out disproportionate amounts of disposable income at organic grocery stores, it became economically viable to invest in the development of what I term “designer apples.” As a result, a dizzying array of new apples hit the shelves and continued to do so year after year. With so many new breeds, the antiquated system of delegating an apple as “good” or “bad” is an unworkable injustice of oversimplification. Society demands an updated rubric for apple evaluation that meets the moment. I have created that rubric. I have no children. This rating scale is my only hope to keep my namesake alive. It is something I hope to be utilized for generations to come and is my only chance at achieving immortality. Therefore I am naming this system: The Frange 100 Point Apple Rating Scale aka the F100. If you'd like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol' Patreon. Picture of the Day Just seconds before runneling.

Welcome to this episode! Join editor & host, Ryan Smith, as he interviews Savanna Perry, Southeast District Vice President for Membership, about her journey in Kappa Kappa Psi and goals for her District. Transcription coming soon. Questions, Comments, Suggestions: smity@kkpsi.org

Welcome to this episode! Join editor & host, Ryan Smith, as he interviews Aly Santos-Silva, Northeast District Vice President for Membership, about their journey in Kappa Kappa Psi and goals for their District. Transcription coming soon. Questions, Comments, Suggestions: smity@kkpsi.org

Over the past four months, VPM News reporters have explored ways Virginians are trying to curb the devastating effects of gun violence in our communities and how survivors and their families are learning to heal. This edition of the VPM Daily Newscast includes all of the stories from our special series “Another Way: How one Virginia city reckons with gun violence,” hosted by Sara McCloskey. To read more about this coverage head to VPM.org/gun-violence.

Pete Neubig has been investing in real estate since 2001. He has owned and managed 39, 52, and 100-unit apartment complexes. He currently owns single-family homes and a 52-unit apartment complex. Pete created a property management company based on the motto "by investors for investors". His property management company has clients from Houston and all over the world. His technology-based systems allow owners to see everything that is happening at their property without having to be involved. Pete leverages virtual assistants to do more than he can do on his own. A real estate virtual assistant (VA) is a business admin who essentially acts as your right hand. A real estate VA can offer a variety of business services in-person or remotely. The right VA can cover diverse tasks like lead gen and database management, or even finance and marketing. Tune in for today's episode where Pete talks about how he uses virtual assistants and what real estate investors should be aware of when they want to take this step in building a team. Episode Link: https://www.vpmsolutions.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and joining me again today for a recurring visit is Pete Neubig and he is the founder of VPM solutions. He's gonna be talking to us today about virtual assistants and what we as investors should be aware of and how we can utilize them to our advantage. So let's get into it.   Pete Neubig what's going on man, you are back for more didn't have enough the first time we had.   Pete: Man, Michael, thank you so much for bringing me back on. I had we had such a blast. You know, last time just talking about my investor jury and then right at the end, we got to talking about my new venture and so I'm glad, thank you so much for having me back to talking about my new venture.   Michael: Of course, no, super, super excited. So for those who didn't catch the tail end of our conversation from your prior episode, give us a quick and dirty who you are, and what you're doing in real estate and what your company is all about.   Pete: Sure. Well, my name is Pete Neubig. I'm out of Houston, Texas, I started buying properties in 2001. I bought so many that I failed miserably at it that I ended up creating a property management firm in 2012, sold that firm in 2019 and in 2020, I started VPM solutions and we went live with our product in 2021 and VPM solutions is think of it as a dating service. It's like it's an online marketplace that connects people in the United States and Canada, like employers, you know, people in real estate, with contractors in mainly Philippines and Mexico, but we're in about 60 different countries where we have different contractors and so that's you know, so we're like, like dating service, like match.   Michael: I love it, I love it, I love it. Okay, so who are your clients? Kind of on the investor side and then who are your contractors on the contractor side, just random, random people?   Pete: Yeah, that's a great question. So we really try to stick with the real estate industry. So because I'm a property manager by trade, we started with property management and so we targeted property managers in the United States and Canada, right, because in property management, as most of your clients know, especially if they self-manage, is a process oriented and is a people oriented business, right? It there's a lot of things you have to do manually and so you can't automate as you can automate a lot. But there's still a lot that has to be done manually. So we started there. So that's our main clients, we're now breaking into the real estate and brokerage side of things because there's a lot of work, there's a lot of help, they need like transaction coordination, and just generating leads and appointment setting, so we're there, as well and on the contractor side, what we're looking we advertise we do quite a bit of advertising in different countries, just letting people know, hey, you can work from home, you can pretty much make a little bit more money than what you can get, you know, in your environment and we actually build some, it's called LMS. But it's video training, that you can literally take video training for free to learn more about right now is property management. But we're going to be built, we're going to be throwing some other videos out there always well, we'll be adding more video training out there and so are our contractors, somebody who's bilingual, someone who's educated, and somebody who's looking to make a little bit more than what they what they make in their own in their own country, and that they want to get into real estate, mainly property management or in the real estate industry.   Michael: Okay, interesting. So I am like, the whole concept of a VA is I understand it, but it's totally foreign to me, I've never utilized one but I know people who have so give all of our listeners who are listening, a little bit of background or insight like why should someone consider a VA, like what benefits do they bring?   Pete: Yeah, another great question, man. It's like, so, here's the main thing, right. What happens is, you get so much work, that you need to hire somebody, right? Whether it's whether you're self-managing, and like me and Steve, what my business partner, we were self-managing properties and next thing, you know, we had all these maintenance requests, we had all these leases that had been renewed and we had all these resident questions and we have lease marketing, and it gets daunting and all of a sudden your conical passive job becomes very, very active very quickly and so now you have to either A) hire somebody or B) you know, hire a property manager or hire somebody internally, right and so when you start looking at assistants in the United States, what happened was, especially after the pen EMIC with inflation. So what's happening is those low level low enjoyment tasks that that you don't want to do as the you know, as the investor or as the self-manager you want to give to somebody else? Well, if you, you try to hire that person United States, typically what happens is that job role doesn't pay what people want.   So for example, it might be like the job role might only pay 30,000 a year, right? That's a full time, whatever, but the person wants 50,000 a year and if you pay that person, what they wanted, you would make you would be negative cashflow, you will make any money. This happens quite a bit when you're managing your own properties and you're kind of building your portfolio and adding more properties to your portfolio. It's like all of a sudden, you're overwhelmed overworked, to hire somebody, now you're cash negative and so and then what happens is with these folks, what I found in my personal job, my personal company, Empire industries, when we when we started, we manage over 1000 units. When I hire people in the US, they have like a GED, or that you're getting very, like you're getting very low, you know, schooled, low education type people, and what happens is one, they're not appreciative of the opportunity get, and then two, they always want more money, and then three, they always bring in their outside challenges into your business, the car doesn't work, they take more time off, you know, they have family drama, that kind of comes into your business and so in the past, what happened was, you have to be stressed out to make money in property management. So I have I have, I have, I have all these doors are managing, I have all this work that needs to be done, I have to hire somebody. But as soon as I hire somebody, now I'm not profitable. So now I have to go get more properties to manage, so that I can bring the income up and now everybody's stressed again and the reason why everybody's stress is because I'm hiring people in the States, which, you know, demand a much higher hourly rate, if you will and so what I realized is, if I, if I hire if I outsourced, in a second or third world country, I can get educated people, bilingual educated people, that will work for a lot cheaper than somebody in the US and it's not, I'm just going to pay them less because they're in the Philippines or they're in Mexico, it's that in Mexico, $10 an hour goes a lot further than $10 an hour in Houston, or $10 an hour in Northern California. So the way I tell people look at is like this, if I took if I was doing the same job in Northern California, as I do in Houston, Texas, I'd get paid a lot more for that job in Northern California, because the cost of living, right, and then I'd get less money doing the same job in Houston, because of the cost of living and I probably make, I probably even get paid less if I was in like Arkansas, because of the cost of living. The dollar still travels just as far. Well just think of Mexico, as you know, as the next level down of cost of living. Just because you're paying somebody $10 an hour doesn't mean you're taking advantage of them. Matter of fact, $10 an hour in Mexico is a very good hourly wage. It's actually a very good wage and then in Philippines, to give you an idea, Michael $4 an hour is a good wage in the Philippines.   Michael: Wow.   Pete: And you think you save yourself? There's no way we're gonna take advantage these people? No, I mean, $4 an hour is a good wage in the Philippines. So it's, you know, as a criminal getting paid very well here in the States and so, the reason why people are outsourcing is because I can get bilingual and by the way, most of these people are either their high school educated or greater. They have some type of education after high school, whether it be associate's or a college degree. So you're getting educated people that that are bilingual, for a fraction of the costs in the United States that you are in the United States and because these low level jobs can, you can only pay so much. Now you can actually pay what the job role requires, which means now you can make more money in the company, right and then I'll turn this around on how we actually helped our US people, because I had people in Empire that were that were making some money. The ones I hired the virtual team members like oh, Pete, you got rid of jobs. Actually, no, they got rid of themselves because I couldn't afford them anymore. They wouldn't work at the level I needed them for the company make money. But once I hired these other virtual team members in the company started making money, I was able to actually pay my US people more, I was actually able to get better benefits for my US people, right because these are contract workers in the Philippines and Mexico and you know, Costa Rica, wherever you're going to hire them from and so they're contract workers, so they work they get paid, that's great. But your team members in the US once a company starts making more money, you can treat your kids because their employees right so you can treat them better stock options or 401k, whatever it was. So for us, it was bonuses, it was higher salary and we started doing we started we started looking at it we start doing health insurance. So that's how we were able to benefit out team. So the next question is, well, what can a VA do that somebody in the US?   Michael: Yeah, that's exactly where I was gonna go with it.   Pete: What I'll tell people is the VA can do anything that the person in us can do except for two things. One, obviously, if they need to be physically at the property, right, right, they can't they can't do that and then we'll do if they need a license, if they need a license to do something, they can't do license act, right. So give you an example, though. We actually had one of our virtual team members do all of our lease renewals? Well, you say, well, P That's a licensee Act and the you know, you need to be licensed to do lease renewals and the answer is actually, you don't need to be licensed to just create the lease renewal, you need to be licensed to negotiate the lease renewal. So what we would do is 90% of our lease renewals were not negotiated, most people just sign the lease renewal, right, most of our owner clients, or our residents would just sign the lease renewal and the ones that would have questions, that would get escalated to our property manager and so what we did just that one, just that one job role, what we did is we literally took 90% of the work away from the property manager gave it to give it to the virtual team member and then a product manager took the escalations. Now, I'm a big proponent of it, the way you can save your company, so to speak, a lot of a lot of stress and noise is can you automate through policy and can you automate through, you know, computer technology, in this case, what we did in this, you have to look at it but in Houston, we know that the average rate, the average renewal rate would go up about 2% per year over time. Now, some years, it would go up more in other years, it wouldn't go up at all, it actually would go down. But over time we…   Michael: need in terms of like the rent, like how much rent, you're getting rent increase the renewal… Yeah, okay.   Pete: So we did is we just create a policy that our rent increases every 2% every year, and we put that in the lease. So there was no negotiating, right on the residence side...   Michael: It wasn't up for discussion…   Pete: Right, so but if people say, hey, I'm gonna leave unless we do XY and Z, well, that would get escalated but we were able to reduce the escalations because of the part because of the policy we were able to automate and then we on the on the owner side, we would send something 90 days out, hey, do you want to renew your release or not, right like, we didn't ask them what the amount was, we because we built the 2% and so we stopped doing CMAs. So it is a lot of grunt work that we can stop doing, which then allows your virtual team ever to actually do a lot more, we have one person for 1000, doors, doing lease renewals, and, and reviewing inspections.   Michael: one person for all 1000 doors…?   Pete: For lease renewals and inspections. Yeah…   Michael: Holy smokes.   Pete: But then I had one person that did all collections. So I'll kind of go through the whole thing, right. So like, you can have a virtual team member, their whole job literally could be making sure that your collections are being done, your notices are getting sent out and that they can if you have if you have a third party company like we did that handle the evictions, they can actually be the gatekeeper with that third with that third party company and do all that stuff. My property managers did nothing with evictions   Michael: What?   Pete: Yeah, yeah. So we again, we had policies in place, right. So if, if the resident owed less than 50%, we, we wouldn't file evictions, if they owed, you know, 50% or more, we'd file the eviction we like so we just put on a different policy. You teach the VA, what the policies are, and then they just follow the process and what's cool is they actually know the process better than you and they, hey, can I do this or this or this instead, and they tweak the process and you're like, yeah, that sounds so much better and then they own the process. So if you're like an investor listening to this, and you don't like magic companies, for whatever reason, by the way, obviously, I own a magic company, I highly recommend. But let's just say, let's just say that you don't like me had a bad experience, and you're gun shy. But what you're finding is your leases aren't being renewed, right? You're your maintenance is overtime, the phone rings you like, I don't want to deal with this. You hate when somebody moves out, because you want to deal with the turn, your books are a mess, because you don't have time to do the books because you're, you know, a high net worth individual working 70-80 hours a week as it is, then a VA could do all of that stuff for you. They can do everything, you got to train them, of course. So just step back, take two steps forward. But they can do your property accounting, they could be your QuickBooks, they could do your business accounting, they could do your maintenance coordination, they could do your turn coordination, they can do your collections or evictions. So they can do your utility turn on and turn offs, like so all that stuff that you like, oh my god, they could do your onboarding for you. So I was going to get a new property you got to enter all that stuff in the in the computer system. They can do all of that stuff for you.   Michael: If anyone's watching the video here, you see that my jaw is like on the floor. So for anyone listening I just want wanted to bring you up to speed. But okay, so peace on, let me just understand. So they could do, like they could do all of this stuff and literally anything I mean sky's the limit is and with regard to things that they can do other than the two things you mentioned the license act, and then anything that requires them to physically be there. But when it comes to accounting, I mean, one thing that I'm thinking about is, there's very sensitive information, there's banking information, there's pat, you know, credit card information, as part of the accounting process that I do personally. So am I going to need to divulge personal information and sensitive information to the VA or like, how does that work?   Pete: Yeah, so, you know, in most in most instances, like in your QuickBooks, and in any property management software, they have different levels of permissions and even in your banking, like I bank with Chase, and Chase has different levels of permissions. So I can give you all the rights to, to my, my, my VA team, right, which I did, I gave them all the rights, so they can see everything, they can reconcile the bank statements, they can, they can look at everything, they just couldn't make any payments, right, they couldn't make any transactions. So that's, that's what we did. Now, we also had two property accountants that they did probably accounts for our third party folks and so they had access to, you know, sensitive information. So what we did is we did a bet we did a thorough background screening, there's a third party company out there that can do background screening, and they came up, you know, pretty, they came out really good. So we went forward, and then we just had our cyber liability insurance policy just to make sure go again, because we're a property manager firm with over 1000 units that we manage. So we wanted to make sure that we you know, we took care of ourselves. But if you're an individual with a handful of properties, or a small property manager, then you can do all of this through the permissions that your banking and that your that your software allows you to do.   Michael: Okay and so as I'm hearing you, you talk about as a man, I'm getting really excited, I'm trying my the wheels are kind of turning on all of the things that I might be able to outsource. What are some things that you should definitely not have a VA do? I mean, have you seen some things go really sideways or go really south because someone said, oh, well, Pete said, they can only can't do these two things. So I'm gonna give my VA everything else. I mean, what should I be thinking about in terms of limitations?   Pete: Yeah, so I gotta be honest, you, Michael I, at first, I always thought like, okay, I'm just gonna give him a list of things to do. I'm going to scan it to him and we're going to just do this stuff off the list, like a checklist thing. I quickly realized he could do much more. Then I said, hey, I own the process and they own the process and they can and now I do believe that I actually had VA supervise people in the States. So I had somebody in Mexico supervising people in the United States. So I believe they can get to that that supervisory level, what I will say is, they can do everything. So I'm not saying they can't do anything. But the one thing is you need to put in place some escalation paths…   Michael: What do you mean?   Pete: So even though they own so let's say for example, they own maintenance, right? Well, they're going to be able to handle 99 out of 10 maintenance calls, no problem. But then there's that mold call that comes in, right where the resident says they have mold, well, right there, that should be a buzzword that gets escalated to the property manager because they don't like they don't have mold in other areas of the country of the world that were that worried about mold as much as much as we do in the US. So if there's like an emergency, that could that can cause you know, a resident can get sick, right, or anything like that we're property code. So each, each state has their own little different property code, right. So like, for example, in Texas, believe it or not heat, if they have no heat, that's, that's a, that's an emergency. But if they have if they don't have air non-emergency, well, we treat no AC as an emergency in our in our company we did and so there was like three or four things that those got escalated a property manager. Now the property manager, at that point would say, I'm going to take it from here, or here's what you should do. But then the property manager is kind of co-managing that ticket. So I believe that in any business that you run, whether you own a property management firm, or you're a you know, an individual landlord that manages your 10 units, there's got to be certain. I call them taps on the shoulder, there's got to be certain tabs that you realize this is a potential problem, right? So let me deal with it or I call them taps two by fours and then getting run over by a man, right? On over by a Mack truck means that you're in a lawsuit, right? The two by four means somebody moved out because you didn't handle a maintenance request in a certain way and the tap is the maintenance request is 10 days, 15 days old, whatever it is, and no one's looking at it. Right, so how can you run your business through tabs? Well, if you have these vas, the great thing is you're not doing the work anymore, right? You're not creating the lease renewal you're not you know, calling, you know roto rooter to get out to the property. You're not doing that but what you have to do is you have to take a step above, right so you have to instead of being at the ground level, you got to be 2000 feet up, right, not 15 30,000 feet up, but at least 2000 feet up and as report you have to review and so if you see a property that's vacant for over so many days, that's a tap, if you see a maintenance request that's open for so many days, or major quests that hasn't been responded to, in so many days, these are tabs. So if you can identify what the potential problems are, your job now becomes manager, right? So I'm not the doer anymore. So you're getting rid of the task or hat, you put it on your manager hat. So if you hire a VA for him to do everything, and then you don't put your manager hat on, I can tell you, you're gonna, you're gonna get in trouble. Especially if you, especially if you do terrible training, which most people do.   Michael: That was gonna be like my next question and so like, for everyone listening, what what's the expectation around training? How long is it before a VA is really up and running and so as people are thinking about, okay, forecasting, I don't need a VA today, but maybe in 369 12 months, I maybe need one. So what's the runway lead up time to get someone effective?   Pete: You're gonna hit the answer, but it depends.   Michael: That's my favorite answer.   Pete: It depends, okay, so the more like, even if I'm a smaller firm, and only got 20 properties, I'm managing, I'm doing everything, you have to teach that VA, every piece of managing that property, right, from onboarding, to, you know, to utilities, to lease ups to move into maintenance, to collections to eviction, to move out, and you have to teach them everything… Well, just because only one move out happens a month, it doesn't make anything any easier, you have to learn, they have to learn how to do that they have to understand basically, property management. So that's going to take a lot longer than say, like, with me, I had one person like all they do is collections. Well, I can teach collections in less than two weeks. Right, especially if you have processes in place. So the big thing depends. So if I wanted to hire somebody for collections, it'd be about two weeks. But if I want to hire someone to do maintenance, the more I call them, if they analysis, the more decision points there are in the job. In the process, the longer the training, right maintenance, so many things go could happen with lease renewals, it's like there's three things, like you teach them the three things, and then they know, okay, I do these three, if this happens, I do this and if this happens, property manager, right. So to my least your own person, it really was like two weeks of training. My maintenance people, it was about two months to three months of training.   Michael: Wow. Okay, so yeah, you weren't kidding. When you said it depends.   Pete: It depends, yeah.   Michael: And then I guess, like, the next question that comes to mind is, what is the turnover look like if I'm an investor, and I'm investing two months, three months into a person really getting them up to speed, and then doesn't work out or they don't like it or they move on, like, what have you seen in terms of turnover?   Pete: That's a great question as well. So what I saw at Empire, I had 23, virtual team members, 23 different roles that that my virtual team members handled, and I had them for about five years, you know, most of the jobs some jobs were newer, but I had people there for five years and in those five years, I had to get rid of I let go of two and one person left. So I had three people, my churn rate was much lower on the VA side of things than they were on the US side of things…   Michael: I was gonna ask… in the US:::   Pete: Now, I'll tell you why my churn rate was low, though, okay, because I treated these people like team members, not like virtual assistants, right? So the old mentality of a virtual assistant is, I'm just going to throw you here's the work, you go do the work, I'm going to make sure it's done and like, that's it right. My guys that we have day out there on our website, they had videos, they were they were part of all of our company meetings, they had, they had ownership of each of their job roles so that they can, they can modify and do things they had, they had more control over certain things. We went down, I went down there to go visit them, because most of my people were one city in Mexico, so I paid them PTO like I gave them like if they even though there were contractors, if they needed a day off Mike just put the time in, that's okay, I'm gonna give you a day. So we the more you treat people like we can we put them on a bonus structure. So if their key performance indicator was met, they got a pat on the back, but if they exceeded it, they got they got 50 bucks, or something small, but $50 to somebody in California that Michael they're going to take the $50 thing it's critical and throw in your face like this isn't even a gallon of gas. You know, and but in you know, Mexico you give somebody 50 bucks that's like a half a day's work, like so again, you so you can make people happier with a lot less with a lot less money, right? because sometimes it's like, oh, it's not the thought. It's like, wow, man, you only gave me $20 like that's like almost like an insult you know, in the US where it's not a over there. So if you treat the people, right, so what does that mean? It's not just like paying them and treating them, right, make it part of the team, but also manage them correctly. A lot of people think like, I'm just gonna hire this VA, but they have, like, they hire the VA and then you're, you're not ready for the VA, like, you hire them because you like you got excited, you heard this podcast, I'm gonna hire VA, right and then it's like, okay, you don't have a good job description, you're not really sure what they should do, you don't know how to manage if they're doing a good job or not and so you hire somebody, and they don't really know what to do, and then you don't know what to do and then it doesn't work out, right. So I recommend anybody do is make sure like you, you create a job description first. So you can go about it two ways:   One is I want them to take this, this process from end to end or two is like I want to be an executive assistant and I want to do the things that I hate doing. So identify the low level low enjoyment tasks that you don't like, create a job description from that, post it out there, say this is what I'm looking for or say, man, I really want to give somebody collections evictions, you know, like that process? So it depends if you're if you're smaller than you may say, hey, I want them to be a property manager and give me all the things I have to do just understand it's a lot more training. So once you have the once you have the job description, so that you know what they should do they know what they should do. The next thing is what are the key indicators that you know they're doing a good job and the rule of thumb is 123 key indicators they call key performance indicators and every job role in the organization should have at least one if somebody has 14, that's way too many, I know because I live this I had my property manager API's and it's not it was way, way too much. So like, for example, your executive assistant. If that's where they are, you know, maybe they have to answer calls, well, maybe a KPI is answering 94% plus call rate, right or response to any email is in less than one day. Now, you the KPIs, you can pull them out of a hat, but they have you have to have a report that can show that, that they can put the KPI and so they have to get the data, the data has to be available, right? So if I say hey, I want a 90% call rate, but my call, my call software doesn't have call answer rate, I'm not gonna be able to get that number. Does that make sense?   Michael: It makes total sense.   Pete: And so you have to be able to report on it. So just because you want a KPI, but there's no way to report on it, then you have to figure out a way to report it and get that KPI. If not, you have to move to a different KPI. So if I have the job description set up, they know what to do that we have the key indicators, so they know what the scorecard is if they're doing a good job or not, and so to you, because so many of you will say, yeah, I feel like that he's not doing a good job. What the hell is that me show you?   Michael: How do you know?   Pete: Especially if they're, you know, 20,000 miles away for you in the Philippines? Like, yeah, like, so how do you know the key indicators and then if you have good training, and you spend the time with them, and then you should once you have the train, So training is like every day, right? You do every day for two weeks, maybe three weeks, you have training every day, hour a day video so they can rewatch it and they can build, they build the process manual, not us. So they build a process manual. Why is that important because if I had 100 page process manual for maintenance, I did Michael I swear at Empire had 110 page process manual…   Michael: We talk in single space, or double space?   Pete: Single space, I think. Like legit, it was legit. Nobody read it. Nobody knew how to navigate it and nobody learned once I had them build their own manuals, guess what happened, they started retaining stuff and they knew how to navigate their manual. So don't be don't be upset if they like let them create their own manual so they can navigate it. So now you know what they what you want them to do. They know what they know what they're supposed to do. You can you can you can scorecard it with the metrics, you train them, and now you manage them and the way you do that is you have a weekly meeting. Now if you're smaller, you're going to have you're going to meet with them every day, right my IV pm or smaller firm was five of us, I mean, when my VAs every day, because we're just we're so small, we have to talk about what to talk every day when I was at Empire because I have 40 people working for me. I met them once a week and I would meet my maintenance team, separate from my accounting team separate from my resident services teams and for my own services team. But I would go over with them each week and we'd go over, we'd say what's a feel good? Tell me something that's good, right because as humans, we have this habit of going below the line instead of like above the line. So let's start off the meeting really good. Let's go over to metrics, right individual and then the group metrics, the department metrics, then let's go over tasks from last week did they get done? Then let's go over challenges and each one of those a five minutes and challenges like 20 minutes, 25 minutes. You don't you can't solve all them all the time. But you can solve you know, a couple of them and if you could solve a couple of challenges each week, you're doing really, really good and then and then one thing I added was what's your stress level from zero to 10. This was interesting because sometimes they'd be at a 10 and it was because somebody was on vacation or we just got 50 new houses that week, it's worth, you know, 10 yeah, okay. But when it's 10 all the time, and that's the standard, that means you haven't to do too much and if somebody's attend all the time, it means they're ready to punch out. Like anybody in your team, you should literally take the pulse of your team on a weekly or monthly basis, right and but here's sometimes the 10 was because they had something going on personally and then I'd get everybody off the off the phone, and then I would talk to them personally and that gives you an incredible opportunity to create relationships with people who you never met, that working with you that are, you know, 5-10 1000 miles away and that is why they didn't leave me because they knew I cared, right, it wasn't a bonus. It was it was I cared, I want them to grow the company, I want them to, you know, to, to feel like they're wanted, but I also cared about their personal lives, I really did and so if somebody had an issue, you know, Hey, man, you know, we talk about so you get to learn a lot about people when you do that. But I did that each week and if a KPI was read two weeks in a row, and went to the issues list, you know, things and so you, if you have a structure with your business, you're the person you hire, the chances at whether that's in the US, like sitting next to you in the US, that's, you know, a few states away, that's working virtually, or a virtual team member outside the borders of the US. If you have structure, the chances of you hiring somebody successfully becomes great becomes very, you know, most cause much greater. But if you don't have that structure, the chances of hiring anybody is not going to be it's not going to be very, very, very good. It's going to be much lower rate of success.   Michael: Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. Pete, have you ever had a VA hire and train another like another VA?   Pete: Oh, yeah, of course. That's the whole job, right? The whole goal, right? So monkey see monkey do, right? So when I forget Empire, the first round of vas, you're looking at the trainer. I was the guy I trained there. Okay but my maintenance team, once somebody would leave, and somebody would get hired, or they would hire a new person, I was out at a training business.   Michael: I love it.   Pete: They train them. So once you train that first batch, and by the way, here, Michael, here's the secret to at Empire, I was gonna hire two virtual team members. That was that's what was in the budget. I interviewed four people hired all four of them and here's the reason why one figure one person is going to wash out right? Can you figure that and then the second thing is, it's, I was hiring two to three people for one person United States.   Michael: Okay.   Pete: All right. So think about that hourly rate, I would get rid of one person us and I'd hire three people in Mexico and so do you think more stuff gets done with three people?   Michael: I would than one probably guessed.   Pete: So. Yeah. So then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna hire four people. So I was over budget, guess what happened within 30 days, I'm able to grow my business because more tasks are being done and so all of a sudden, it's like, yeah, and if one but I hired four, none of them washed out, I was one of them wasn't a good fit, they were a good fit for the organization, not a good fit for the role. So we moved on to a different role. So another important thing is when you hire and this is probably I mean, your team, your, your listeners probably know this. But every business has core values, that can be a sheet on the wall that you never look at, and they're not going to be any, they're not going to be worth anything for you. But you should have core values that you hire, fire, promote and demote on, and give raises to like, that's your core value. So who are the people you want on the bus with you, right and if you are, if you are an individual landlord, that you know has a bunch of house and you're looking to hire that first person. Well, that's a business, right Michael, would you teach that like, as soon as you're hired, as soon as you buy that first house, you are business…   Michael: Yeah, you are business…   Pete: You are business. So you need to have core values and if you don't, as a business, you should have them as an individual. So who are the people I called the fog. So who do people want to foxhole with you? That gets you the right person in the organization. But that doesn't mean they're the right person in the right seat, right because the right see, for example, like, if somebody's super outgoing, you want them in sales, if they're super outgoing, but not detail. You don't want them in accounting, right? I might have the right person. But if I put that outgoing person, and that's shipping and sales and accounting, he's going to do a terrible job. So I found the people through my core values, I then put them through a personality profile test. I like disk. It's super simple. I don't know what you would use. Do you have one that you use?   Michael: No, not personally, but I'm definitely going to be adopting one as I'm gonna get for virtual assistant, yeah…   Pete: There's, there's a lot of them out there. Disk is super easy. I know it very well. It's easy to learn. So I use disk. So that tells me I get the right person in the organization. I put them in the right seat and through my job description and my key performance indicators. I know they're going in the right direction. So if you do all of that, and then you do the training and then you do the managing the chances of you having somebody washed out or somebody leave, it goes down dramatically. It's not 100%. It's never 100.   Michel: Like anything… Yeah, that makes a ton of sense to me, Pete this has been, this has been super eye opening, really exciting, exciting stuff for people that want to learn more want to take advantage of the cam solutions, like how do they get in touch with you? Where should they be going?   Pete: Yeah, so you can go to https://www.vpmsolutions.com/ , and create a free profile. So that's the other thing, Michael, everything on the company side is free. So creating a profile posting a job, searching for people, finding them is all free. When you thought when you hire somebody, they we charge the virtual team member a percentage, and that's how we make our money. So, it's free to the company. So all you're paying is the hourly rate, and a small processing fee that we pass on from the stripes of the world onto the onto the dude the company, but that's what it should go and if you want to email me directly, it's pete@vpmolutions.com and we have over 14,000 virtual team members in 60 countries on our on our site right now looking for work and we have property management video training that your listeners can actually take for free as well. So we have like, I think we have like 12 courses, it's over about nine hours of content it goes from, it's basically the lifecycle of property management. So if you are a, you know, a self-manager, and you want to learn more about how I can manage my property a little bit more efficiently, I highly recommend taking those courses and then when you post the job, you can actually ask your VA, these are the recommended courses that we recommend that you take and then people would actually take those courses on their time and they're done. So you're getting a little bit of people trained before you actually are paying them.   Michael: That's really slick and it probably helps weed out a little bit more of who's serious versus who's not is who's gonna put in the time in advance.   Pete: Absolutely, 100%...   Michael: Oh, man, I love it. Pete This has been so great. Thank you for coming on with us a second time. Definitely, we'll be in touch man.   Pete: Yeah, Michael, thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.   Michael: You got it, take care. All right, everyone. That was our episode a big thank you to Pete for coming on. Super exciting. If you couldn't tell it was pretty giddy throughout the episode. It's something that I'm going to be very much looking into for my personal business. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, we love hearing from you reviews, comments, feedback questions are always welcome in the comment section, and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…

Pete Neubig is a realtor who focuses on investment properties. Pete has been investing in real estate since 2001. He has owned and managed a 39, 52, and 100-unit apartment complex. He currently owns single-family homes and a 52-unit apartment complex. Pete created a property management company based on the motto "By investors for investors". His property management company has clients from Houston and all over the world. His technology-based systems allow owners to see everything that is happening at their property without having to be involved. Tune in for today's episode where Pete talks us through some of the mistakes that he made as an investor and how he's doing things differently today. Episode Link: https://www.vpmsolutions.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me, I have Pete Neubig who is a real estate investor and CEO of VPM solutions and Pete is going to be talking to us today about some of the mistakes that he made as an investor and how he's doing things a little bit differently today than maybe your typical investor. So let's get into it.   Pete, what's going on, man? Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. Appreciate you coming on.   Pete: Michael, thanks so much for having me, I'm really looking forward to it.   Michael: No, me too and so before we hit record here, you were telling us about the three different lives that you've lived. So you are a super interesting guy. Needless to say. So for anyone who hasn't heard of Pete Neubig before, give them the quick and dirty rundown of who you are, where you come from, and what you're doing in real estate today.   Pete: Sure. Well, real quick. Let's see, I'm from New York City originally, I moved to Texas in Houston back in 1995. So I have a gun. So I guess I'm a Texan now.   Michael: Give me one when you move to the state, like I think…   Pete: They give you a cowboy hat, a gun in some boots, you know. So I started buying real estate in 2001 when I bought my first property, actually, I bought a duplex and a single and a a 100 unit apartment complex like same day, like I closed on the same day, I ended up owning bunch of property that I ended up starting a property management firm and I got so busy doing that, that I stopped buying real estate for a while just to build the investment, the property management business, I ended up selling the property management business and now I started a an online platform. It's a virtual property management solutions or VPM solutions where we connect the real estate industry with virtual talent around the globe, so…   Michael: That's so cool. Pete just taking a total step back to say you're from New York now living in Texas, do you remember like I don't know in the late 90s, early 2000s there was that pace salsa commercial where like all the cowboys were sitting around like, where's that guy from New York City, New York City? When you say that, that's like the first thing that I thought of like, oh, hey, salsa commercial.   Pete: And I still can't say y'all correctly I get I get I get yelled at all the time and I'm down here saying y'all, so…   Michael: Y'all with the New York accent, I love it, I love it. Well, you did you I mean, this is a really cool trajectory that that you've ended up on and I would love to focus on kind of the first stage of your investing career where you own a bunch of rentals and again, we were chatting before we hit the record button, and you were saying that you had sold a bunch of them off, and then actually paid off some of the remaining ones. So walk us through, you know, like, why because I think I think a lot of people would be like, oh, that's stupid, like, what is Pete doing? You gotta have leverage. That's how you juicy return. So, you know, walk us through how you built up the portfolio and then why you decided to sell them but then keep some free and clear.   Pete: Sure thing. So I started buying on my own first right so I own like 12 I think it was like duplexes. I was for some reason I was love duplexes. I think most people would say, well, it's the cash flow, right? Duplexes, have a great cash flow and I was always looking at just cash flow and I think if I go back in my, in my investor life, I can tell you, Michael, I've lost so many millions of dollars by not buying houses with very low cash flow, because I forgot about this thing called appreciation, right? I wasn't buying cash flow, right and my goal at the time, I was a young man, I was early 30s, like 30-31 when I started buying, my goal was to get enough cash flow so I can just leave my corporate job. That's kind of what the way I was thinking. So I buy a bunch of properties and then I get I get talked into being a passive investor for 100 unit apartment complex and I told if I buy one apartment complex, I can retire right? So I'm like, oh, great, you know, monopoly, I'll buy a bunch of houses, sell them and all that good stuff. Well, it just never materialized. I was buying lower income homes and if anybody knows the lower income homes a cash flow is really just on the sheet of paper. It's not it's not true returns unfortunately, because there's little things like you know, the evictions or you know, not getting all the rent and in the make readies are not a couple 100 bucks or a couple of $1,000 because people in low income they take what's called parting gifts. You know, they take your AC, your doors…   Michael: Your goodie bags, you know…   Pete: Yeah, good. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so I ended up connecting with a business partner named Steve Rosenberg, who he's kind of a a national speaker now but Steve and I ended up finding his guy who is offloading a lot of his portfolio. So we thought this is great and we ended up buying like 30 houses and we were both enamored with buying property. But we didn't had no idea what to do once we bought them. Like we were terrible and how to manage them. So what happened was…   Michael: Pete was this was this local in New York or local in Texas, there was this remote?   Pete: Yeah, great question. So I was, I was, I had lived in Texas at the time, we're buying everything in Houston. I there was no such thing as Roofstock that we knew have to go buy stuff in other areas and back in the early 2000s, the average price of a single family home in Houston was like around 130. I was buying it for 35,000. Like, lower low income houses. Yeah.   Michael: But not have roofs, like, what's the deal?   Pete: Man, they were just in low income and today, those houses are now worth about 150, right, 20 years later, and I was buying them at 35 and they were worth 50 to 55,000. So I was buying them below. But I just found an investor who wanted to offload stuff but he was offloading me all his problems, right and if you don't have good management, behind you, if you have a good management company, by the way, it's really difficult to manage these low income stuff. It just is because they don't pay online, they don't abide by the lease, they have dogs, when they say they're not going to have dogs, all that all this stuff that you have to deal with. It's just difficult and so Steve and I, we ended up buying 31 homes. So now I have 31 homes, and we advertise bad credit, okay, no credit, okay, like you have you have a pulse and $1 will, we're gonna let you in the house and of course, that comes back to bite you to the point where not only are we not making the cash flow that was projected, but we're losing money at the end of the year, now I have to come in and pay for my taxes and my insurance and so now I'm working even harder at my nine to five than I did and I'm working hard to manage these properties.   But all of a sudden, this this like, dream that you have is becoming a nightmare and so, you know, caution, number of cautionary tale number one for your listeners is buy absorb, right, and then buy some more like don't just keep buying if you can't manage the assets, or number two is go find a professional management company that will take your properties. My problem was I had my problems was so low, I couldn't get a professional management company to take my properties. The manager companies know how hard they are and I'm like, Well, I'm gonna give you 25 They're like, Yeah, great. Keep it like, we want to charge you more. So I ended up creating the management company with Steve so we can manage our own properties and so there's been two there's two things, the two big instances that happen in my investing life that has propelled me to pay off properties, right. So let's get to your question. The first thing was I bought all those properties, and I wasn't making cashflow, right, but I had to pay the note every month, right and at the end of the year, now I'm getting in tax and insurance. And so there was no cashflow there and there's no appreciation I just told you it took him 25 years to get that double or triple of appreciation. So I own these properties for 10-12 years for 35,000 and they were worth like 45,000 right 50,000 I told you I got equity, but that nothing ever increased. So when that when the banks are coming and asking for their money, and I gotta go work a double because I need more money, or I gotta go sell off stock because I got to. So that that was something that kind of made me realize maybe I want to be the bank myself, or maybe I don't want to owe the bank so much money. So that was the first thing. The second thing was, I ended up buying that 100 unit apartment complex that I told you about and that 100 unit apartment complex. I am still today friends with the lead investor, he's a good guy, we just had a bad plan. We lost the apartment complex. Now I was a passive investor and now here's cautionary tale number two for your investor listeners. If you're going to be a passive investor, make sure that you either A have an attorney you trust or be read the documents yourself. So I was a passive investor, but I was legally on the hook for with my credit. So I personally signed the note. Yeah, I see you I see you if you for those of you not look, for those of you listening and not watching the video, Michael's jaw just dropped, right and so and then what happened was because the plan was bad, we couldn't we couldn't make a payment and so the bank led us to believe that we can restructure our debt. Well, they ended up having somebody that would buy the debt would buy the property from under us. So they foreclosed on us and sold the property for more than what we owed, which in normal cases, you think that's fine. I owed 1.1 million they sold for 1.5 million. I should be off the hook. Well, there was a little checkbox that said no, if they foreclose on me regardless how much they sell, they can sue me for that amount. So I got personally sued for one point $2 million.   Oh my god all because now I will tell you this, I paid a mentor and I paid an attorney. Before I got into that deal thinking I covered myself, I got a guy who's done a bunch of apartment complexes, I have an attorney, they just missed that. They just missed it, the mentor wanted to deal to get done because he was the broker on a deal. So it really was it wasn't aligned. You know, are you know, of course, at the time, I was like, get the deal done. But he needed to protect me from myself at that time and so when you owe, so long story short, I ended up selling. I had a six unit apartment complex that I sold, made 30 grand, and I actually was able to, to pay $30,000 to make the lawsuit go away. So the bank knew that what they were coming after me, they knew that they didn't really have a good case because they made their money. So they just wanted their attorney fees paid for but that put the fear of God in me to be quite honest and so I vowed that I don't want to ever be over leveraged, right and so of course, Kiyosaki talks about other people's money and every you know, rich, Guru, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, guy, every guru out there will tell you, if you can borrow 110% borrow 110%. Well, back in the early 2000s, you were able to borrow 110% I don't know if you remember and so I did that, right now. I was fortunate that I was able to overcome when the properties weren't making any money because I had a job. But if you are again, a cautionary tale number three, if you are a full time real estate investor, you cannot survive when you when your cashflow negative, it's very, very difficult, and you have to sell off assets. But if the assets are worth less than what you owe, that's a challenge. So when I got into property management, I realized pretty quickly that people will manage Class B homeless people will buy and rent Class B homes, I always had this mindset that people will only manage or rent Class C or D homes. I'm like, no one's gonna pay $800 in rent or $1,200 in rent, and go buy a property, a nice property and have $1,200 on my mortgage, right? Like it was a mindset thing and so another tale is if you're an investor, don't you don't try to buy anything that you would live in you. Other people will live in stuff that you like, why would they rent stuff when I when you can buy something? So when I found that aha moment, I pivoted and I hired a property manager. Finally I was trying to property manage and I was terrible at it. Like, I'm like, I had to hire a property manager. First day she comes in, she goes, okay, we're gonna fire half your clients, this tree store, we had 67 doors, 30 of them were mine. She's like, we're gonna fire half your clients, because those houses are in are in a low income area. They're not worth managing. We're gonna pivot, we're gonna get these Class B homes. Oh, and by the way, you need to sell off your homes. We're not managing your homes either. So you know what I said, You know what, I've been trying to make this work for so many years and are every year I'm coming at the end of the year, I gotta pay money. Now I quit my job to start my property management firm, which by the way, I was making $105,000 a year now making $12,000 a year am I okay? These properties, they can't be an albatross around my neck. So I sold a bunch of homes. So I had, I think 31 of them and 25 are in kind of the lower income area and I couldn't get rid of some of them. So I owner financed them and that was when I had an aha moment. So I was able to wrap the note, I had a very good, I had a local bank and I had a very good relationship with a local bank, and they allow me to wrap the note, right. So basically what that means is I've sold the property to you Michael, right. But I still own the property, you pay me 10% 20% down, you're gonna pay me a mortgage, and then I'm gonna pay the bank, the mortgage, and I get the spread. Yeah, the first time ever that those properties made me money.   Michael: Wow, okay. Were you able to sell them for much more than you paid for him? I know, you said there wasn't much appreciation.   Pete: No appreciation. But remember, I did have equity. So I sold them for like 50,050 to 55,000. I bought it for 35,000. So I was able to make money that way but if you think about it, I lost so much by owning and by doing the rehabs that I kind of broke even. Okay, it's great. Like, I'm able to be on podcast now. Tell that story, I guess. You know, it's the school of hard knocks, right? That's it. So college is way more expensive than that, by the way that just took me a lot of time. I ended up breaking even and making a little bit of money on it. But what happened was so when I when I started my property management firm, I don't know if you've ever started a business from scratch, Michael, but it is not easy, right? I didn't I didn't build it. I didn't buy somebody else's business, right. I built it from scratch and, you know, it's at 90 hour weeks. It's every day, you know, and so I got away from the investing thing. So I sold off my assets at a 52 unit that I sold office well took a bath in there, investors lost money.   So I don't like multifamily. I can just tell you that much. I know you do. I've listened to some of your stuff. But we could debate that on another pod. A lot of fun things off. So when I, when my property management firm seven years later started becoming like I was working now five hours a week, 10 hours a week, I started getting back into buying investment properties. So I was able to find and a bought a couple of properties for about $120,000. It's called Baytown. So it's a little bit it's like a Class B, B minus area, blue collar, I like it gray area of town in Houston to buy in, because there's a lot of renter's there, but I started buying them and I started buying cash. So of course, you have to have the cash, right. So I had some cash I was able to buy in cash and so all my other properties that I did keep, I kept paying those down, and I have those in cash. So today, instead of 31 non producing properties, I have eight properties, one of them is paid for, and I own the note. So I sold it, I did an owner financing sell and I make more money on that property now than I ever did when I rented it out. I have three others that are paid for three or four, four others that are paid for and then I have four others that have a note on them. With the four that I bought the last four, I bought a boat with a note, it was one of those commercial loans. Package note, I had to put 30% down I did, I bought them in January of 2020. So right before the pandemic, there I bought it for 535 from a California investor he was done. We I gotta because I own the management company. So before I went on the market, I made him an offer and so I got him for 535 they appraised at 640 and I put 30% down and they kept they cashflow beautifully and I have I have a small note and now if I want them to sell one of the houses, I can take it out of notes, sell it pay the note down. So now I own eight or nine properties total and they're worth you know, close to, I want to say like one like one, let's call it 1.2 million, I only want 300,000 or 350 on the whole thing, right and my cashflow is about 12,000 a month, uh, me a little bit less, a little bit less, a little bit less, maybe like 10, five around there and so, so I'm a big fan of owning the property outright. So I have both houses that aren't paid for right, so. So it's just hear me out on this, I am now in my 50s. So in my 30s I was a big fan of taking out mortgages, as much as you can bind as much as you can, because you got this thing called time on your side, you can make mistakes, right? At 50 you have less time, right? I've 20 years less, so I can't really make the same mistakes. So I believe even though I make less cash on cash, right? Less overall, I have this thing where I can sleep better at night, right? The house is paid for like, for example, I own  a house, I just had to put in a brand new AC and heater, right cost me like I think like six grand. That's cash flow for a year in most in most instances, right and you can't afford it because you don't have the money. Well, when the house is rented for 2500 a month. That's only two to three months. It's not terrible. It doesn't it doesn't knock you out of the game. You're not always stressed for cash. In my in my in my bank account for my business, my housing business. I got like 30 to 35 to $45,000 sitting there all the time, right. So if anything ever happens, I'm okay and so that in now because they're paid for I have more cash flow. I don't have to pay all the notes all the time. So, so again, as you get older, you're like, okay, well, how can I have like, How can I afford to live day to day? Well, if I have $12,000  a month coming in, and I only have $22,000 going out for principal and interest. Well, now I'm at 10 grand and now you figure another 3000 a month in taxes and insurance. So now I'm at seven grand. Well, that's, you know, that's almost 80,000 a year in Texas. It's not terrible and of course if maintenance happens, which always does you never get that full 70% right you never get that full deal. So because of my past issues with banks, by the way the bank on the 100 unit apartment complex really, they really screwed us they let us believe one thing and kind of did the end around and so because of that, I'm really you know, just I was scared is not the right word, but very unjust and very hesitant, hesitant to do it now. That doesn't mean that I won't take on a note, especially if I can't afford to buy something in cash, but I'm gonna He's going to put 2030 40% down, whatever, whatever the bank wants, and then a little bit more and then I'm like, I'm at the back into my life, right? So I am looking to, to pay these things off. So I have 20, year amortizations. If I could, if I could pay them off in 15 years. Okay, I'm 60-65 and now I have no notes, and I have all these houses paid for and at the end of the day, you want to live on cash flow, right? You don't want to live on like hoping that your properties increase in value, and then you can take the money out. If they're if they're paid for in 10 years, I can go take you know, 80-70, 80% of the value of the house, which are increasing now. tax free. So I have so I do have ability to, to go take the money out. Should I should I choose to do that?   Michael: Yeah, man, this is wild, man. This is this is such a cool story and of course, I'm so sorry to hear that you had to deal with all that nonsense, Bs. But it sounds like it helped lead you to the decision and kind of path where you are today. So would you say that you're thankful for those experiences as crummy as they were?   Pete: Yeah, look, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger and I am truly I think I'm a better business partner today than I then I was back then I'm a better investor today for sure and so overall, I feel like I'm, I'm better, I'm a better as a person, because you won't like, like I said, if it doesn't kill you, the one thing that you as an investor, as a real estate investor, you have to make sure that you don't make the mistake that could put you out of business, right. So in my when I had the 100 unit apartment complex, I use my 401k. No my IRA money, so I went and did a self-directed IRA and that's how I invested my money, lost it all, by the way, okay. Again, at 31, I lost 120 grand, which is a lot of money for me back then. A lot of money for anybody right now. Okay but it didn't put me out of business.   Once I once I was able to clear my name with the bank, my credit was cleared, everything was clear. Like it was never it's not on my it's not on my credit history at all, because they know that they messed up and I was part of our deal. So that allowed me to get back in the game and by I had another pair of business partners, that they ended up taking bad advice, they ended up using credit cards, taking money out of their credit cards, cash advances, to put money down to buy this apartment complex, because some guru told them that he did it, just because he did it and it's possible doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Well, they had declared bankruptcy. So they were they were out of the game. They you have a bankruptcy, you're not going to be buying investment properties. Why don't you know, you're not going to buy your personal home, let alone investment properties. So as a real estate investor, for the for if you're listening to this, you know, it's great to take on some risk. I mean, obviously, we all take on some risk, right? We know there's no guarantee price is gonna go up. There's no guarantee that people are going to pay their rent. There's no guarantee but don't take on a risk that will put you out of business.   Michael: Yeah, I love that and I think that makes a ton of sense. Pete, you said something kind of at the beginning of your story that I want to come back to and that's you were buying these low income properties, and you bought them and you scrimped and you saved and you and you put these deals together, and they really hadn't appreciated very much and you sold them because your property manager, right, yeah, that after that, they appreciate it. So like, talk to us about how people should be thinking about if they're in a similar situation, they bought a property. They did all this work to get the deal done. they scrimped and they save and they just haven't seen very much appreciation. Maybe they're in a similar situation where it's not cash flowing, or it's just covering its expenses. It's just not what they thought it was going to be. When should someone cut their losses and run and maybe go try something else or how do they know maybe they should keep hanging on because we're right around the corner from that appreciation jump?   Pete: Yeah, that that is if I had a crystal ball, I could I could answer that. I can just, I can just tell you from my perspective, I did everything I could to make those properties work. I mean, I would put it you know, like when we did a rehab, we made the house even nicer than it was right? We got rents up, but for whatever reason, and we just can never get them to cash when we were losing money. After about five years, I think you got to if you do not have the cash flow, where you can lose money every year on your properties, and it hurts you. You know, I think you got to cut the cord after a couple of years of trying everything. You have to try everything though. I'll tell you my grandfather before he passed away, he was in his 80s and he when he passed away, he was worth I think 30 million. So this is a guy who knows a thing or two. But he told me one of the last conversation I had with him he said, Pete, never sell your property. When grandpa died here. We had a lot of property it was he was a mess. The guy didn't put any money into it. Son of a gun when we had to deal with it, but it was luckily all those properties appraise or appraised value over time, time heals all wounds if you can afford it and knowing like, hey, like, I can tell you this when I bought the properties in my early 30s, I needed the cash flow as a means to I try to exit out of the of my, you know, my w two life, right?   Luckily, my w two allow me to handle those properties, right, allow me to handle the losses. When I got into starting my own business, I knew the upside of starting my own business was great but starting my own business meant I had to take a huge step back in how much money that I can afford, that I was going to be able to extract out at a business. I wasn't venture backed, none of that stuff, right. I mean, I literally just hung a shingle and I started working. Well, I couldn't afford to lose the money on those properties anymore. So that was, that was a big reason on why I decided to sell. Now I will tell you, I sold all those properties in 2015. I bought them in like 2008 2005 I bought most of them and I saw them 10 years later. So it wasn't for lack of trying Michael like I tried right? Even after 2015 they didn't jump up until recently, like this pandemic has me all jacked up, I have no idea what's up what's down, like, I thought the price would come down. So I sold my last property in that area of town for 120. I bought that piece of property for 50 in 20 in 2005, so here we are. So it kind of matches up right 2005. Here we are 15 years later and that thing actually, you know, more than doubled. Now that property I owner financed, I sold it at 120. It was probably worth 100. Alright, so probably doubled in value over those 15 years. I always pay, I always sell it for a little bit higher because I'm holding a note. I want to build in that appreciation. You want to go through the numbers on it real quick?   Michael: Yeah, let's do it again. All right.   Pete: So when I when I own the home, and I rented it out, I was renting for 1000 bucks a month.   Michael: Okay, you bought it for 50 renting for 1000. So crushing the 2% rule. Everyone on paper is like, oh, you're killing it.   Pete: Right? Exactly. On paper, right. So 1000 bucks a month. So now you like Pete, you're making $1,000 a month. But am I Michael? I'm not making $1,000 a month, right? What do we have? We have taxes 300 bucks a month now making 700 a month? What do we have? We have insurance 120 a month. Okay, so now I'm down to 580. My management fee was 80 bucks, I'm down to 500 bucks a month and that's before you get into maintenance and turn, right. So on my best month I make 500 bucks a month.   Michael: Oh no.   Pete: You wanna go through the numbers?   Michael: Yeah, let's do it, man.   Pete: Or go through the numbers. Okay, so I'm renting that property for $1,000 a month, right? I bought it for 50 rent it for $1,000 a month, right? So am I making $1,000? a month? No way? No, right because the taxes were 300 a month. So now I'm making 700. Right, my insurance is 120 a month. So now making 580 and my manager fees are 80 bucks a month. So I'm making 500 bucks a month and asked me for any kind of maintenance happens or turn. So the best I can do is 500 a month, right? So now I sold the property I sold for 120 got 10% down. So the notes 113. I sold on a 20 year amortization 7%, I found a company that will actually serve as the note for 30 bucks a month that I pushed on to the buyer. So right now it's cost me nothing. The principal and interest on that house is 7-78 and it's like I think it's like $67 is principal and $7 is interest and that's what I make on that house every month, right? If taxes go up, does it affect does it affect me and my cash flow? No insurance goes up doesn't affect my cash flow. Refrigerator breaks doesn't affect my cash flow   Michael: Vacancy could be vacant doesn't affect your cash flow.   Pete: Doesn't affect my cash flow. Now I ended up selling this one to an owner occupied. So I didn't sell to an investor on this one. So the owner occupied and he pays and all I gotta worry about is if he doesn't make his payment, I can foreclose on him. I don't know what the laws are in California in Texas, it's about 21 days. Before we before we can start the process and start the process.   Michael: Okay, okay. Okay.   Pete: So 21 back in the day used to be 21 days, you get them out now it's like…   Michael: That's what I was going to ask. Yeah. Okay. So just real quick on owner financing, because I think this is something that a lot of our listeners who own property should hopefully their ears are perking up. How do you underwrite a buyer, someone who's going to be, you know, seller financing from you as the lender as the owner.   Pete: So, I don't really care about credit at that point because if they had good credit, they're not coming they're not buying.   Michael: They go then to a bank…   Pete: Right, exactly. So what I'm looking for and what I'm always looking for is why is it credit bad, right? So are they not paying their rent or are they not paying the you know, the electric bill or whatever, whatever, you know, car or bill or whatever it is, right? So I want to know what kind of why they're why they have such bad debt. I don't care why they have such bad credit, I don't care that bad credit and then I'm looking at cash, how much money they make. So what happens is a lot of these guys, so guy that that bought my property, he's in like the construction business, right? So he has his own little deal, he can't show he shows no income, but he showed me his bank statements and he showed me his deposits for the last couple of years and so I just look at how much cash do you have, can you afford it right and then, as a property manager, I always go to two and a half to three times. So if I can get two and a half to three times of cash for what it's going to cost them all in, then I feel I feel at that point, it's not that big a deal. Also, he's paid me 10% down. So I have some cash there. So if he did move out, or couldn't afford any more, I got a little bit of cash, I could make the place a little bit nicer. Okay but the mentality of somebody who buys your property, even if it's owner finance verse, somebody who rents your property, let me just tell you what happens, right? When somebody used to rent that property, what they used to do there give me a long list of stuff that didn't work in the house, that they wanted me to fix it, right, even though the lease says, as is all that good stuff, right? When somebody buys a house, they're getting a long list, and they're improving the house. When somebody rents your house, they're paying the car to pay the electric, they're paying their damn Hulu bill before they pay you because they know that they can they know the eviction process all the way through and how long it take them right? When they own the house were they paying first and for paying…   Michael: The mortgage first. Every time they pay the mortgage, first…   Pete: Hulu gets put on the back burner, the car payment gets put on the back burner. So the mentality is completely different. I've only I've only you know, I think he's been over there a little over a year, never had one issue with payment. Knock on wood.   Michael: That's great and is the term is the note do you get it full term to 20 years or is it a couple of shorter year term with a 20 year AM?   Pete: I will have to double check but I'm pretty sure it's just a 20 year amortization and he just pays me to 20 years and then that's it. So what a lot of people say to me is well, Pete, you're missing out on the appreciation, right? Like, if you sold the house or 100, or the house is worth 120,000 or 200, right? So if you think about this, Michael, most people don't pay extra. Most people don't pay the house off early or if they do right grade, they pay the house off early. They make my money. But he's paying $60 In principal and $680 in interest, right? If you if you pay that house off in 20 years, he's gonna pay that he's gonna pay about 240,000 hours on that house. I think I got my appreciation.   Michael: Just fine. Yeah. Oh, man. I love it, I love it. That is so cool Pete. That is such a great story.   Pete: I built into cushion of 20,000 so that he can't refinance right away. Right, because the house is only worth 100. So by no one's gonna give him $110,000 or whatever it takes to refinance the house. So by increasing it a little bit, you save yourself at least those first you know, five years or so.   Michael: Super, super smart. Super smart.   Pete: Yeah, that's a good one.   Michael: That's a that's a really that's really good, man. Pete, we could chat for hours, man. What's the best way if people want to learn more about you reach out to you for, nobody gets to cover your VPM solutions today, but learn more about your words, where is the best place to do so?   Pete: Yeah, you know, best thing is they can actually I'm on all the socials I guess. But it's Pete Neubig NEU big and you can email me at: pete@vpmsolutions.com or you can just go to our website to https://www.vpmsolutions.com/ and check us out.   Michael: Right on man. Well, thanks again for coming on and sharing some wisdom, really appreciate you.   Pete: Thanks, Michael. Very good talking to you.   Michael: All right, when that was our episode, a big thank you to Pete for coming on super interesting way of thinking and doing things just a little bit differently than maybe we hear about what we need to be doing as investors. So as always, if you've liked the episode, we'd love to hear from you ratings and feedback are always appreciated, and we look forward to seeing you the next one. Happy investing…